RECON 


PHICAQO,  iLUNOlS. 


T  13:  E 


Reaction  from  Agnostic 
Science 


BY 

REV.    W.    J.    MADDEN, 

AUTHOR   OF 
"DISUNION  AND  REUNION/' 


Second  Revised  Edition. 


St.  Louis,  Mo.,  1899. 

Published  by  B.  HERDER, 

J  7  South  Bkoadwat. 


^^d<o^5<o7 


Nihil  obstat, 

P.  G.  HOLWECK, 

Censor  Theologirar. 
S.  L^dovicl,  die  3  Aprill  1899. 


Imprimaiur. 

t  JOHN  J.  KAIN, 

Archbishop  of  St.  Louis. 
St.  Louis,  Mo.,  April  5th,  1899. 


Copyright,  1899, 

By   Jos.  GUMMERSBACH. 


— BECKTOLD— 

PRINTING' AND  BOOK  MFO.  CO. 
ST.  JvOUIS,  MO, 


To 

those  whose  hearts 

are   troubled 

by  the  burden  and    the  nnystery 

of  life, 

and  to   those  who 

say  they  can  not  believe, 

this  book 

is  kindly  dedicated. 


J    i  r 


PKEFACE. 


In  another  work  entitled  '''Disunion 
and  Heunion^^  which  I  ventured  to  publish 
some  time  ago  (Burns  &  Oates),  the  ques- 
tion treated  could  interest  only  those  who 
still  hold  by  the  Christian  name,  and  still 
cherish  a  belief  in  the  fundamental  doc- 
trines of  Christianity.  But  unfortunately 
there  is  in  our  day,  as  is  well  known,  a  largo 
class,  who  while  living  among  Christian 
populations,  and  conforming  outwardly, 
and  often  unconsciously,  to  the  standard  of 
Christian  morality,  because  compelled  by 
custom  and  convenience  to  do  so,  at  the 
same  time  openly  renounce  all  belief  in 
Christian  dogma. 

"  Our  kinsmen  in  the  flesh ' '  and  of  Chris- 
tian ancestry,  they  surely  ought  to  be  in- 
cluded in  the  appeals,  now  so  earnestly 
made,  for  religious  reunion.  And  I  think 
a  strong  appeal  may  be  addressed  directly 
to  them,  at  this  moment,  by  pointing  out, 
that  the  agnostic  science  which  in  our  day 
has  been  entirely  responsible  for  the  prevail- 
ing unbelief,  has  proved  unsatisfying  and 

(V) 


VI  PREFACE. 

disappointing  in  its  conclusions;  that 
there  is  more  unrest  among  men  now  than 
before  it  began  its  destructive  criticisms, 
and  that  many  of  its  own  prominent  pro- 
fessors are  showing  signals  of  distress.  It 
will  be  practical,  also,  to  bid  them  weigh 
the  value  and  use  to  men  in  their  every-day 
life  of  the  conclusions  of  faith  as  against 
the  conclusions  of  unbelief  and  thence  con- 
sult for  their  personal  safety. 

Such  is  the  simple,  and  let  us  hope,  use- 
ful aim  of  this  book. 

It  is  a  short  book.  I  have  purposely 
kept  it  short.  In  a  busy  age  it  will  have 
a  better  chance  of  being  read. 

Modesto,  Cal.j  1899, 


CON"TENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 
Need  of  the   Reaction  _        _        _        _        9 

CHAPTER  II. 

Signs  of  the  Reaction     -        -        -        -  21 

CHAPTER  III. 
What  Provoked  the  Protest         -        ~        -       36 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Agnostic  Socialism  _        _        _        _.  49 

CHAPTER  V. 

Instances   of   Real  Socialism        -        -        -       69 

CHAPTER  VI. 
Other  Questions  Unanswered  by  Science  87 

CHAPTER  VIL- 

The  Alternative  of  Science  _        _        -       98 

.   (vii) 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

"LachrtmuE  Rerum"       _        _        _        «  107 

CHAPTER  IX. 
*' Static   Bene   Fida''  -        -        -        -     123 

CHAPTER  X. 
Important  and  Practical         -        -        -  137 

CHAPTER  XL 
Present  Day  Dangers  to  Believers      -        -     152 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Mysteries         ______  ig7 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Further  Difficulties  and  Their  Answers  172 


The  Reaction  from  Agnostic  Science. 


Chapter    I. 

Need  of  the  Reaction. 

As  I  sit  writing  this  morning  there  lies 
before  me  the  smiling  scene  of  a  fertile 
California  valley  with  the  famous  Lick  Ob- 
servatory crowning  Mount  Hamilton  on  the 
ridge  of  the  Sierras  beyond.  And  the 
thought  has  come  to  me  that  if  some  wild 
and  loosened  flood  burst  suddenly  over  that 
valley,  its  devastating  waters  and  the  wreck 
they  should  leave  behind  would  fittingly 
illustrate,  without  much  exaggeration,  the 
desolating  infidelity  that  over  a  hundred 
years  ago  broke  over  more  than  one  coun- 
try which  used  to  pass  as  believing  in  the 
"  argument  for  things  that  do  not  ap- 
pear." Up  to  that,  men  deemed  it  reason- 
able to  live  in  a  simple  trusting  faith  and 
bore  more  equably  the  toil  and  the  burden  of 
existence.  Since  then,  the  air  is  filled  with 
questionings  and  doubts,  minds  are  troubled 

(9) 


10      THE  REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

and  restless,  and  from  the  view  of  many, 
the  promise  and  sustaining  hope  of  future 
and  of  better  things  have  faded  away. 

But  just  as  there  have  really  been  floods 
in  that  valley  in  other  days  and  now  its  soil 
is  all  the  richer  for  their  coming,  so,  per- 
haps, will  the  souls  of  men  be  better  for 
that  other  and  more  disastrous  flood  when 
its  troubled  waters  shall  have  receded. 
And  happily  there  are,  in  these  later  years, 
unmistakable  signs  that  they  are  subsiding. 

But  a  little  while  ago  the  agnostic  sci- 
entist, always  referred  to  as  "  that  eminent 
man  of  science,"  was  for  worldly-minded 
people  the  supreme  pontiff  of  all  knowl- 
edge worth  knowing.  In  pity  for  a  genera- 
tion whose  '^  intelligence  was  limited  and 
whose  mind  was  warped  by  old  supersti- 
tions that  were  said  to  be  revealed  because 
they  could  not  be  proved,"  he  undertook  to 
explain  the  universe  on  a  rational  and  scien- 
tific basis.  A  tone  of  superiority  and  se- 
cure self-confidence  marked  all  his  pro- 
nouncements. His  style  was  magisterial. 
The  crowd  like  that.  It  is  imposing. 
Here  are  men,  they  say,  who  make  you 
feel  they  are  sure  of  what  they  teach; 
let  us  hsten  to  them;  and  they  lis- 
tened. The  disciples  of  science  in  the  mid- 
century  were  many  and  credulous.  The 
output  of  the  press  proved  it.     Great  books 


NEED   OF   THE   REACTION.  11 

full  of  the  new  knowledge  went  through 
large'  editions.  Popular  science  lectures 
were  established  in  all  the  great  centres. 
The  men  of  agnostic  science  went  on  tour. 
They  had  crowded  and  enthusiastic  audi- 
ences. Their  novel  theories  and  specula- 
tions became  the  fashion  of  the  hour  in  uni- 
versities, in  drawing  rooms,  and  in  working- 
men's  unions.  Not  to  be  able  to  talk  Dar- 
win and  the  Origin  of  Species  was  to  be  very 
uninformed.  Not  to  have  at  least  dipped 
into  the  hard  and  ponderous  meditations  of 
Herbert  Spencer  was  to  be  incompletely  edu- 
cated. 'Not  to  fall  into  praise  of  the  classic 
diction  of  Tyndall  —  not  to  be  an  admirer 
of  the  bolder  and  more  downright  style  of 
his  twin-star,  Mr.  Huxley,  and  not  to  know 
at  least  the  drift  of  their  daring  and  sure 
views,  was  to  be  a  very  old-fashioned  person 
and  much  ^'  behind  the  times."  Not  to  be 
tinged  a  little  with  the  crabbed,  sour  scorn 
of  Thomas  Carlyle  and  gloat  over  the  sav- 
age anger  of  the  omniscient  judgments  he 
chartered  himself  to  pass  on  all  mankind, 
was  to  be  unadvanced.  Not  to  be  tolerant 
of  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  in  his  open  denial 
and  even  flouting  of  the  Divinity,  or  his 
brother  —  one  of  the  judges  of  England's 
High  Court  of  Justice  —  in  his  restless  theo- 
logical doubtings,  was  to  be  illiberal.  To 
speak  disapprovingly  of  the  mental  gym- 


12      THE   BEACTION  TROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

nasties  of  James  Anthony  Fronde  in  his 
curious  pilgrimage  from  AngHcan  monasti- 
cism  to  the  free  shrine  of  the  modern  un- 
behef,  was  to  undervakie  true  freedom  of 
mind.  Such  was  the  feeling  w^hich  to  a 
very  large  extent  prevailed  in  England  and 
the  English-speaking  world  not  so  long 
ago.  There  have  been  signs,  too,  that 
similar  motions  of  the  scientific  spirit  had 
taken  place  in  most  European  countries. 
Reviews  of  the  foreign  publications  in  Ger- 
many, France,  Russia,  Sweden,  Belgium 
and  even  Holland  and  Switzerland,  made  it 
clear  that  this  emancipation  of  human 
thought  from  the  trammels  of  the  super- 
natural, was  triumphantly  proclaimed  far 
and  near.  In  fact  from  the  year  1850  to 
the  end  of  the  next  quarter  of  our  century 
the  agnostic  scientists  had  a  fair  and  free 
field.  They  had  the  reading  multitude  at 
their  feet.  Men  would  listen  now  to  no 
other  instructors,  and  great  things  were 
vaguely  hoped  to  come  from  the  invigorat- 
ing freedom  of  universal  si)eculation.  All 
beliefs  and  traditions  that  hitherto  prevailed 
were  to  be  put  aside,  and  an  entirely  new 
direction  was  to  be  given  to  thought  and  an 
entirely  different  sort  of  knowledge  to  be 
acquired.  It  appeared  that  this  could  not 
be  done  without  throwing  discredit  and 
obloquy  on  the  older  order,  and  very  bold 


NEED   OF  THE   REACTION.  13 

words  were  now  said  out  loud,  which  for- 
merly were  suppressed  for  fear  of  Coventry. 
"Oh,  the  freedom  and  the  freshness  of  it," 
said  one  young  man,  who  afterwards  be- 
came quite  famous,  when  he  read  for  the 
first  time  that  blaspheming  enigma  called 
Sartor  Besartus,'^ 

1^0  patient  hearing  could  be  gained  for 
the  literati  of  the  old  and  orthodox  side  in 
all  that  time.  Many  were  chary  of  criticis- 
ing the  new  theories,  lest  they  should  be 
set  down  as  opposed  to  learning  and  prog- 
ress. And  that  was  a  terrible  label  to 
attach  to  one's  self.  A  few  prominent 
Catholic  writers  entered  the  list,  but  as  a 
Frenchman  finely  says  of  them,  it  was  only 
to  carry  on  a  coquetterie  reglee  with  the 
scientists  of  skepticism.  For,  while  guard- 
ing their  orthodoxy  by  referring  the  ulti- 
mate cause  of  all  things  to  the  action  of  an 
omnipotent  Creator,  they  freely  embraced 
the  theory  of  evolution,  i,  e.,  the  develop- 
ment by  gradual  process  of  everything  and 
every  one  from  identical  germs. 

With  the  best  intention,  no  doubt,  they 
made  a  sweeping  sacrifice  of  the  literal 
sense  of  Genesis,  and  wrenched  somewhat 
violently  the  text  of  the  story  that  men  so 
long  deemed  sacred,  as  a  concession  to  those 

*  See  Mr.  Huxley's  obituary  on  Tyndall  in  "Nineteenth 
Century."     February,  1894. 


14      THE   liEACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

who  were  openly  ignoring  God,  and  deny- 
ing all  divine  and  supernatural  action,  in 
the  origin  and  growth  of  the  world  and  its 
denizens. 

Now,  evolution  is  not  of  such  demonstra- 
ble certainty  that  it  does  not  leave  us  yet 
free,  to  reject  it  if  we  choose,  and  while 
giving  all  due  credit  to  men  of  great  ability 
like  Mr.  Mivart  and  Mr.  W.  S.  Lilly,  we 
may  be  permitted  to  question,  whether  all 
their  ingenious  pains  to  set  up  an  orthodox 
evolution,  have  been  repaid  by  any  good 
result.  They  certainly  made  very  little 
impression  on  the  agnostics,  and  their  fel- 
low-believers are  not  much  more  enlight- 
ened, while  not  a  few  may  have  suffered 
from  a  disturbance  of  views  to  no  useful 
purpose. 

There  was  one  instance,  however,  of  an 
eminent  lay-writer,  whose  steps  were  not  so 
mincing  in  the  lists.  In  a  controversy  with 
the  biggest  man  among  the  agnostics,  in  fact 
the  very  inventor  of  that  peculiar  name  — 
agnostic  —  Mr.  Gladstone  held  the  old-fash- 
ioned language  of  an  uncompromising  Chris- 
tian. He  spoke  of  ''Our  Lord  "  and 
"miracles"  and  ''Satan"  and  "divine 
teaching"  as  a  matter  of  course,  without 
the  least  show  of  human  respect  before 
those  mighty  men  of  science.  It  was  edi- 
fying to  believers,  to  see  this  veteran  of  po- 


NEED   OF   THE   REACTION.  15 

litical  strife  make,  at  his  great  age,  so  brave 
a  stand  for  the  supernatural,  and  though  he 
may  have  failed  to  convince  his  individual 
antagonist,  his  sincerity  extorted  from  Mr. 
Huxley  a  handsome  compliment  at  the  close 
of  the  argument ;  for  he  applied  to  the  great 
statesman  the  words  invented  by  Shake- 
speare for  Cleopatra :  — 

**  Age  cannot  wither  him, 
Nor  custom  stale  his  infinite  variety.'** 

But  the  day  was  coming,  when  a  voice  of 
protest  was  to  be  raised,  not  from  among 
the  believers,  but  from  the  ranks  of  the 
friends  and  sympathizers  with  godless 
science.  These  men  of  beliefiess  sci- 
ence were  to  be  arraigned,  and  at  length 
asked  to  show,  where  was  the  benefit  to  their 
fellow-men,  from  their  theories  so  loudly 
and  confidently  proclaimed.  They  were  to 
be  summoned  to  point  out  what  reliable 
comfort  they  had  built  up,  or  were  going  to 
build  up,  to  take  the  place  of  the  ancient 
beliefs,  that  had  been  a  protecting  shelter 
to  men  for  ages  long. 

The  public  mind  was  more  or  less  pre- 
pared, for  this  turn  of  events.  People  had 
been  awed,  but  had  now  grown  a  bit  wearied 

♦See  the  "Nineteenth  Century"  —  Gladstone-Huxley 
Controversy  on  the  miracle  of  the  swine. 


16      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

of  the  solemn,  tiresome  omniscience  of  these 
men,  and  so  were  in  a  mood  to  enjoy  the  re- 
volt in  their  camp. 

That  pontiff  of  agnosticism  —  Prof.  Hux- 
ley—  shortly  before  his  death  (for  alas ! 
even  so  mighty  a  dictator  in  letters  is  not  im- 
mune from  the  common  lot  of  mortals)  — 
composed  a  general  preface,  for  the  final 
reissue  of  his  works.  In  this,  he  gives  the 
public  a  bit  of  his  early  mental  history,  in 
his  characteristic  style.  He  says,  that  in  the 
beginning  of  his  scientific  career,  he  found 
stretching  across  his  path,  and  barring  his 
way,  the  old  traditions  of  revelation.  They 
were  regarded,  as  sacred  and  impassable. 
They  were  too  high  to  climb,  he  tells  us, 
and  to  crawl  under  them,  he  would  not  con- 
descend—  he  disliked  mud.  In  this  dilemma, 
he  bethought  him  of  a  third  way  to  sur- 
mount the  barrier.  He  would  hew  his  way 
through,  hack  and  demolish  it  I  This  he 
proceeded  to  do,  and  to  his  great  relief, 
found  it  to  be  only  lath  and  plaster  and 
cardboard  —  mere  rubbish!  Having  thus 
rid  himself  of  the  Bible,  and  all  its  tales, 
he  marched  unimpeded  along  his  scientific 
pathway,  with  what  practical  results  time, 
and  his  friends  are  beginning  to  show. 

However,  he  was  not  summoned,  from 
that  happy  pathway  he  had  cleared  for  him- 
self, before  he  was  to  witness,  by  an  un- 


NEED   OF   THE   REACTION.  17 

pleasant  irony,  other  and  just  as  manly 
hands  as  his,  beginning  to  hack,  and  hew, 
the  barrier  of  scientific  theories,  which  he 
and  his  colleagues  were  at  such  pains  to 
erect,  across  the  pathway  lighted  by  faith. 
The  protest,  which  is  beginning  to  be 
heard,  and  which  is  quite  a  notable  feature, 
in  the  history  of  contemporary  secular 
thought,  is  not  directed,  it  need  scarce  be 
said,  against  scientists  of  that  patient  and 
unassuming  class,  who  do  no  hacking,  and 
hewing  of  sacred  things.  There  are  those, 
who  confine  their  scientific  researches,  solely 
to  the  material  benefit  of  their  fellow-men. 
Their  laborious  days  have  been  given,  to 
smooth  the  rough  places  of  life,  and  make 
the  human  lot  more  bearable,  through  the 
exceeding  convenience  of  their  ingenious 
inventions,  and  marvelous  discoveries.  But 
these  men  never  cast  disturbing  trouble  into 
the  souls  of  their  fellow-men,  nor  sow  dis- 
quieting doubts,  in  human  minds.  Such 
scientists  are  greatly,  and  deservedly  hon- 
ored. Watts,  Stevenson,  Thompson  (Lord 
Kelvin),  Nasmyth,  Pasteur,  Quatrefages, 
Virchow,  these  are  the  men,  leaders  of  a 
large  and  useful  class,  who  are  justly  re- 
garded, as  benefactors  of  their  kind.  Any 
one  of  these,  is  of  more  real  worth  to  his 
fellows,  than  all  the  monarchs,  or  states- 
men, or   great   captains,  who   spent    their 


18      THE   REACTION  TfLOM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

days  amid  the  dire  tragedies  of  human 
slaughter,  which  fill  so  largely  the  history 
of  the  race.  There  are  few  among  living 
men,  who  would  not  rather  be  a  Pasteur 
than  an  Alexander,  or  Napoleon,  a  Bis- 
marck, or  a  Moltke. 

It  is  not  against  scientists,  such  as  these 
that  either  complaint  can  be  made,  or  reac- 
tion take  place.  The  challenge,  that  is 
now  beginning  to  be  delivered,  concerns 
only  that  class  of  scientists  —  biologists  and 
naturalists,  who  have  pushed  their  work, 
otherwise  useful  perhaps  and  lawful,  be- 
yond its  legitimate  limits,  and  assuming  a 
dictatorship  over  contemporary  thought, 
arrogantly  demand,  the  surrender  of  all 
previous  beliefs,  in  favor  of  their  scientific 
researches  —  proposing  these  as  the  proper, 
and  only  rational  source  of  human  knowl- 
edge. 

Such  a  summons,  issued  in  a  tone  of  as- 
sured authority,  has  considerably  disturbed 
a  multitude  of  minds,  without  adding  any- 
thing to  their  happiness,  and  nothing  what- 
ever, to  the  hopes,  that  men  will  ever  refuse 
to  relinquish. 

The  chief  disturbers  of  the  world's  men- 
tal peace  in  our  time,  have  been  Hegel, 
Schleiermacher,  Strauss,  Hartmann,Vache- 
rot,  Taine,  Renan,  Darwin,  Tyndall,  Spen- 
cer and  Huxley  —  a  formidable  phalanx. 


NEED   OF  THE   REACTION.  19 

To  these,  on  the  literary  side,  must  be 
added  the  numerous  theorists  of  the  "  social 
question,"  who  ignore  the  supernatural  in 
everything,  that  touches  the  human  condi- 
tion. Such  are  Karl  Marx,  Kropotkine, 
John  Morley,  Carlyle,  Hugo,  Elisee  Reclus, 
Henry  George,  Louis  Blauc,  Leslie 
Stephen,  and  the  usual  host  of  their  imita- 
tors in  the  pubhc  press. 

As  may  be  supposed,  the  religious  lead- 
ers and  teachers,  have  not  been  silent  on 
the  side  of  belief.  But  such  apologists,  are 
scarcely  regarded  at  all,  by  those  other  men. 
They  are  set  aside,  and  superiorly  despised. 
Protests,  merely  professional,  are  not  to  be 
taken  seriously.  They  are  Ciceronian 
pleadings,  "pro  domo  sua.  In  self -protec- 
tion, such  protests  have  to  be  made  —  a 
mere  matter  of  course,  that  everybody  ex- 
pects, and  nobody  minds.  Interested  wit- 
nesses, are  out  of  court  in  this  important 
discussion,  and  so  forth.  The  words  of 
professional  religious  teachers,  gave  no 
alarm  whatever  to  these  agnostic  scientists. 
They  treated  them  as  something  to  be 
amused  at,  or  as  a  subject  for  their  rail- 
lery, and  lofty  scorn. 

However,  it  was  entirely  another  matter, 
and  much  more  serious,  when  murmurs  of 
misgiving  and  protest,  began  to  be  heard, 
from  the  men   behind    them,  from  those, 


20      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

whom  they  fully  believed,  to  be  sympa- 
thisers and  supporters  —  from  men,  who 
lived  far  from  the  camp  of  the  clericals. 

Some  few  years  ago,  vague  hiuts  began  to 
be  heard,  like  stray  shots,  regarding  the  un- 
satisfying results  of  scientific  conclusions, 
as  the  panacea  for  our  mortal  woes.  A  pa- 
tient hearing  had,  hitherto,  been  given  to 
the  agnostic  scientists,  and  men  had  been 
waiting  in  confident  expectation,  for  their 
announcements.  The  magisterial  tone  of 
these  eminent  men  of  science  had  inspired — 
nay,  imposed,  that  confidence. 

In  old  times  kings  "  touched  for  the  evil." 
In  our  time  —  democracy,  having  exploded 
the  divine  in  kings,  and  most  other  things — 
it  was  science  that  was  to  touch  for  the 
evils  of  humanity.  But,  now,  that  its  magic 
hand  had  been,  for  some  time,  stretched 
forth  to  heal,  it  is  not  apparent  that  the 
evils  of  poor  humanity  are  growing  any 
lighter,  or  less.  In  fact,  never  before,  have 
they  been  so  pressed  upon  the  public  atten- 
tion, or  louder  plaints  uttered  by  the 
masses,  as  in  our  day.  Science,  it  seems, 
has  been  "  touching  "  in  vain.  In  all  its 
boasted  pharmacopoeia,  there  is  no  potent 
drug,  for  humanity's  ills.  And  so,  men, 
naturally,  began  to  ask  of  the  scientists, 
"What  practical  good,  has  come  to  the 
world  from  the  years  of  your  laborious  re- 


SIGNS   or  THE   REACTION.  21 

searches  —  is  a  mere  negative  result,  all  we 
are  to  get  for  our  patient  waiting?  ' ' 


Chapter    II. 
Signs  ol  the  Reaction. 

The  first  formulated,  and,  indeed,  formid- 
able complaint,  came  from  a  French  acade- 
mician, M.  Ferdinand  Brunetiere.  This 
was  a  startling  surprise,  to  the  agnostic 
school,  and  caused  a  great  sensation.  He 
was  not  only  a  man  of  recognized  eminence, 
in  the  literary  world,  but  he  always  passed 
for  a  leader  among  Parisian  lihi^es  penseui^s . 
He  published  in  the  Eeview,  of  which  he  is 
the  Directeur-gerant  an  article,  treating  of 
what,  he  very  roundly  and  boldly  called 
"  the  successive  bankruptcies  of  science." 

This  article  marks  the  date  of  the  aggres- 
sive reaction  against  the  scientists,  of  which 
we  now  see  the  rising  tide. 

Renan,in  his  usual  tone  of  tranquil  confi- 
dence, had  announced,  that  "religious  beliefs 
will  slowly  disappear  from  the  world,  mined 
by  primary  instruction,  and  by  the  predomi- 
nance of  science,  over  literature,  and  educa- 
tion." Prof.  Huxley  wrote :  "If  the  scientific 


22      ^HE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

method,  working  in  the  domain  of  history, 
philology,  and  archeology,  has  become  so 
formidable  to  the  dogmatic  theologian,  what 
may  not  be  said  of  the  scientific  method, 
working  m  the  domain  of  physical  science?" 

To  them  M.  Brunetiere  makes  answer,  not 
only  in  the  article  alkided  to,  but  in  others 
with  which  he  followed  it  up  in  1895,  and 
1896,  that  religious  belief,  far  from  disap- 
pearing, or  being  extinguished,  by  the 
"  scientific  method,"  is  becoming  recog- 
nized as  the  only  basis  of  solution  for  the 
problem  of  man's  social  condition.  In  his 
interesting  and  able  review  of  Mr.  A.  Bal- 
four's book,  "  The  Foundations  of  Belief  " 
he  says:  "What  is  now  discussed,  is  the 
question,  whether  physically  or  physio- 
logically  the  necessity  of  belief,  like  the 
necessity  of  knowledge,  must  enter,  in 
some  part,  into  the  very  definition  of  man  ; 
whether  historically^  social  evolution  is  con- 
ceivable without  the  supernatural,  which 
has  ever  been  mingled  with  it,  as  a  guide 
and  explanation ;  whether  morally^  it  was 
ever  possible  to  foi*mulate  a  rule  of  conduct 
for  men,  which  did  not  draw  its  sanction 
from  the  absolute." 

lie,  thus,  honestly  forces  on  the  attention 
of  his  scientific  friends,  the  fact,  that  when 
men  wish  to  analyze  and  account  for  human- 
ity, from  what  point  soever  it  may  be  looked 


SIGNS   OF  THE   REACTION.  23 

at,  the  "  scientific  method  "  is  felt  to  be  in- 
sufficient, and  that  it  is  the  religious 
method  (to  borrow  the  word)  which  must 
be  relied  on.  M.  Brunetiere  ranges  him- 
self on  this  side,  and  freely  admits  that  it 
is  as  foolish,  as  it  is  futile,  to  banish  the 
supernatural  from  the  discussion  of  the 
grave  problems  of  life.  He  is  especially 
strong  on  the  impotence  of  reason,  as  the 
only  guide  and  sole  source  of  knowledge, 
and  just  as  feeble  as  reason,  science,  its 
hand-maid,  has  also  proved  to  be.  Science, 
he  asserts,  has  no  answer  to  give  to  the 
various  social  problems,  which  occupy  pres- 
ent-day thought  so  prominently ;  on  that 
account  men  are  beginning  to  turn  aside 
from  it,  disappointed  and  dissatisfied,  to 
seek  an  answer  somewhere  else.  Science 
has  been  weighed  in  the  balance  of  prac- 
tical knowledge,  and  found  wanting. 

This,  in  substance,  is  the  conclusion  of 
M.  Brunetiere,  and  thus  he  bears  witness, 
that  a  real  reaction  has  set  in  against 
science  as  piu'sued  by  unbelievers.  This 
writer  is  a  power  in  the  French  world  of 
letters.  Unless  his  place  were  among  the 
foremost  writers  of  France,  he  would  not 
be  a  member  of  her  famous  Academy.  It 
is  easy,  then,  to  imagine  the  dismay  of  his 
fellow-agnostics,  at  such  an  avowal  on  his 
part.     Some   of  them  called  it  the  "  great 


24      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

betrayal."  It  was  not  that.  It  was  only 
the  honest  admission  of  his  own  return  to 
sound  sense,  in  which  he  showed  a  great 
courage  in  support  of  convictions  unpop- 
ular with  his  friends.  It  is  a  striking  sign 
of  the  times. 

But  in  the  world  of  English  letters  there 
is  another  sign  just  as  striking.  At  the 
time  that  M.  Brunetiere  was  confessing  his 
failure  of  faith  in  the  "  scientific  method," 
another  mind,  not  less  trained  and  brilliant 
than  his,  was  engaged  on  the  same  line  of 
thought  in  England.  I^ot  long  after  the 
Frenchman's  declaration  of  the  "  successive 
bankruptcies  of  science  "  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Moiides,  Mr.  Balfour's  thoughtful 
book  ' '  The  Foundations  of  Belief ' '  fell,  as 
a  surprise,  on  the  world  of  London.  It  cre- 
ated a  profound  sensation.  That  so  busy 
a  man,  as  theLeader  of  the  Commons,  could 
find  time  for  the  lengthy  and  deep  medita- 
tions, of  which  this  book  is  the  evidence 
and  expression,  was  astonishing  enough. 
But  that  one,  whom  high  questions  of  State 
are  supposed  to  absorb,  and  whom  the  little 
spiritualizing  pursuit  of  politics  chains  to 
utterly  worldly  things,  should  be  discov- 
ered devoting  a  large  share  of  attention  to 
the  supernatural  and  the  eternal  questions, 
was  a  shock  to  the  worldly-minded  and  a 
scandal  to  ''  advanced"  thinkers  of  every 


SIGNS  OF  THE  REACTION.  25 

hue.  What  gave  special  cause  for  uneasi- 
ness, was  the  great  literary  power  and 
charm  displayed  in  the  book.  It  would 
scarce  be  possible  to  treat  in  a  finer  and  less 
fatiguing  vein,  those  grave  questions,  which 
other  writers  of  ability  too  often  envelop 
in  metaphysical  and  unrefreshing  obscurity. 
There  is  a  great  variety  in  it,  there  is 
novelty  of  view  and  originality.  There  is 
an  easy  and  confidential  tone  —  though  lady- 
readers,  if  it  find  any,  may  resent  the  bit  on 
bonnets,  as  decidedly  rash  for  so  confirmed 
a  bachelor  as  Mr.  Balfour.  But  you  will 
remark,  besides,  a  grave  earnestness  in  it, 
which  makes  you  feel  that  the  author  was 
under  the  stress  of  the  liherare  animam 
meam. 

The  whole  drift  of  the  book  is,  mani- 
festly, a  reaction  against  science  of  the 
dogmatizing  kind.  It  is  a  plea  for  faith, 
and  a  convincing  call  to  reinstate  the 
supernatural  in  its  own  place  as  a  source  of 
certitude  and  knowledge.  Twenty  years 
ago,  the  author,  probably,  would  not  have 
had  the  courage  to  publish  it,  and  if  he  had, 
he  would  just  as  probably  have  got  no 
hearing  on  the  subject.  His  first  book 
bore  the  less  open  title  of  "  PliilosopMc 
Douhty  But  the  present  one  —  a  mani- 
fest invitation  to  believe  —  was  the  fashion 
of  the  day  and   the  book    of   the  season. 


26      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

This  may  be  owing,  in  some  measure,  to 
the  high  place  attained  by  the  writer  in  the 
world  of  politics,  but  it  is  owing  just  as 
much  to  the  fact  that  men's  minds  were 
prepared  for  it,  and  were  feeling  a  want 
they  find  there,  in  part,  supplied.  It 
shows  that  thousands  of  others  are  think- 
ing the  same  thoughts  that  Mr.  Balfour 
has,  so  ably  and  so  interestingly,  put  into 
words. 

It  is  important  to  note,  that  a  demand 
was  at  once  made  for  a  French  translation 
of  this  book,  and  as  a  coincidence  it  is  in- 
teresting to  learn,  that  M.  Brunetiere  was 
asked  to  write  its  French  preface.  This 
shows  how^  instinctively  and  quickly  was  rec- 
ognized the  identity  of  view  between  these 
two  distinguished  men,  on  the  grave  step 
of  a  return  to  religious  thought  —  men  who 
probably  had  never  seen  each  other,  lived 
in  different  countries,  and  had  nothing  in 
common,  save  their  previous  free-thinking 
tendencies.  This  is  surely  striking  evi- 
dence of  a  reaction. 

In  my  book,  ''Disunion  and  Keunion^'^ 
I  incurred  no  little  criticism,  and  even  ridi- 
cule, for  the  statement  that  Scotch  people 
would  yet  wield  an  influence  over  English 
thought  in  the  direction  of  the  old  faith. 
Mr.  Balfour  is  a  Scotchman  ! 

M.  Jules  Payot,  another  of  the  French 


SIGNS    OF   THE   KEACTION.  27 

Uhres-penseurs,  in  a  book  called  "  De  la 
Croyance,^^  enters  his  protest,  also,  against 
the  shortcomings  of  science.  Among 
other  severe  things  he  says  :  "  My  science 
does  not  hinder  my  ignorance  of  realities 
from  being  absolute ;  science  has  a  sym- 
bolic language  and  an  admirable  system  of 
signs,  but  the  more  it  progresses,  the  far- 
ther it  gets  from  the  reality  of  things,  and 
plunges  into  abstractions." 

Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd,  in  his  book,"  Social 
Evolution ^"^"^  which  has  attained  a  wide  and 
just  popularity,  also  strongly  expresses  the 
same  feeling  of  disappointment  with  the 
scientific  method,  and  its  exiguous  results. 
This  book  of  Mr.  Kidd's  has  also  had  the 
honor  of  a  French  translation .  This  transla- 
tion was  made  by  M.  Le  Monier,  and  pub- 
lished by  the  firm  of  Guillaumin  of  Paris. 
This  would  seem  to  indicate  a  demand  in 
France,  just  now,  for  a  literature  widely 
different  from  that  of  the  old  school  of 
irreligious  scoffers  and  incredulous  philos- 
ophers. 

There  is  scarcely  any  Review  in  Europe, 
or  for  that  matter  in  all  the  world,  which 
commands  a  greater  influence  among  the  lit- 
erary public  than  the  Paris  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  So  many  of  its  contributors  have, 
from  time  to  time,  been  elected  to  the  high 
honor  of    membership    in    the    Academie 


28      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

Francaise^  that  it  has  aptly  been  called  the 
vestibule  of  that  famous  Olympia.  Under 
the  rule  of  its  founder  Mr.  Buloz,  it  was 
unfortunately  the  happy  hunting-ground  of 
the  most  aggressive  anti-religionists.  It  was 
through  its  pages  M.  Renan  first  found  an 
audience,  and,  for  a  long  time,  it  remained 
merely  the  organ  for  agnostic  free-thought. 
But  of  late  it  has  come  to  its  readers  as  a 
surprise  to  notice  how  it  has  been  steadily 
veering  round  to  the  orthodox  compass-point 
of  religious  thought. 

Time  was  when  this  Review  would  not 
have  published  the  following  story  of  Count 
Cavour's  end  —  even  though  written  by  the 
Count  Benedetti :  ''In  a  lucid  hour  of  his 
last  illness  Cavour  sent  for  his  servant  — 
'  Martin,'  said  he,  'we  must  part.  Send  in 
time  for  Padre  Jacobo,  the  parish  priest  of 
the  Madonna  dei  Angeli;  he  promised  to 
assist  me  in  my  last  hour.'  This  priest  was 
sent  for  and  spent  a  half  hour,  hearing  his 
confession.  This  he  (Count  Cavour)  af- 
terwards told  to  his  friend  Farini :  '  My 
niece,'  he  said,  '  has  brought  Father  Jacobo 
to  see  me,  for  you  know  I  must  prepare  for 
the  great  step  into  eternity.  I  have  made  my 
confession,  later  on  I  shall  receive  com- 
munion. I  want  all  to  know,  especially  I 
want  the  good  people  of  Turin  to  know, 
that  I  die  a  Christian.'  " 


SIGNS    OF   THE    REACTION.  29 

What !  Cavour  sent  for  a  Catholic  priest 
and  asked  for  the  sacraments  of  the  church? 
What  a  scandal  to  the  free-thinkers  and 
his  fellow  free-masons  !  Cavour,  the  noble 
radical  —  the  unrivaled  statesman,  whose 
powerful  mind  swayed  the  councils  of  Eu- 
rope, who  was  years  ahead  of  his  great  co- 
eval Bismarck  in  statecraft  —  the  untiring 
w^orker  for  Italia  Unita  —  the  intriguer  with 
the  Carbonari  and  that  plebeian  bandit  Gar- 
ibaldi—  the  sworn  foe  of  the  Pope,  and  the 
beloved  of  all  devout  Protestants  —  he  send- 
ing for  a  priest  and  dying  an  avowed  Cath- 
olic—  this  should  not  have  been  made 
known,  it  is  such  a  bad  example  to  the 
atheistically  enlightened !  Yet  it  is  in  the 
pages  of  the  Reime  des  Deux  Mondes  for 
October,  1896,  that  this  piece  of  history 
is  given,  vouched  for  by  the  distinguished 
Ambassador  who  knew  him  well. 

In  the  same  pages  too,  has  appeared  far 
the  best  appreciation  of  the  life  and  work 
of  the  late  Cardinal  Manning,  from  the  pen 
of  a  Protestant  gentleman,  M.  Francis  de 
Pressense.  When  his  able  and  sympathetic 
articles  were  published  atterwards  as  a 
book  it  was  "crowned"  by  the  French 
Academy. 

In  this  Review  a  writer  of  great  and  ver- 
satile talent,  with  the  liquid  Bohemian 
name  of  Wyzewa,  is  also  permitted  to  give 


30      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

a  remarkable  criticism  of  that  stupendous 
work  (in  eight  hundred  and  sixty-five 
parts)  of  the  artist  M.  Tissot.  The  open- 
ing words  of  his  critique  are  so  much  to  the 
purpose  of  this  chapter,  that  I  may  be  par- 
doned for  quoting  them  at  some  length  in 
translation  :  "  Every  one  has  heard  of  that 
beautiful  and  good  princess,  who  after  long 
years  of  perfect  wedded  bliss  was  brought 
back  by  her  husband  and  left  in  the  wild 
woods  where  he  first  found  her.  Her  only 
fault — truly  a  rare  one  —  was  that  she  was 
too  good  and  too  beautiful  —  at  least  so  says 
the  story.  But  I  fancy,  that  born  as  she 
was  in  a  wood,  and  knowing  nothing  but 
love,  many  little  rustic  traits  helped  to  de- 
tach from  her  the  princely  husband's  affec- 
tions. Perchance  he  bethought  him  that 
she  once  tended  sheep  and  was  of  rather 
low  birth,  or  perhaps  as  he  grew  older  he 
acquired  new  tastes  and  fresh  desires,  her 
natural  disapproval  of  which  he  could  ill 
brook.  All  we  know  is  that  he  treated  her 
most  shamefully ;  but  hardly  had  he  again 
consigned  her  to  her  native  woods  than  he 
was  seen  to  run  about  the  world  in  the  most 
light-hearted  manner  looking  for  a  more 
amiable  princess  and  one  worthier  of  being 
the  wife  of  a  prince  like  him,  than  the  poor, 
discarded  first  love.  He  soon  discovered, 
however,  that  the  princess  he  had  put  away 


SIGNS   OF  THE  KEACTION,  31 

was  the  best  of  them  all ;  for  none  of  those 
he  subsequently  encountered  could  bestow 
upon  him  the  happiness  he  sought.  So  after 
saying  to  himself  twenty  times  over  —  no 
doubt  through  pride  or  may  be  weakness  — 
that  he  uever,  never  would  recall  her  from 
exile,  still  finding  that  he  could  neither  live 
nor  die  without  her,  he  one  fine  day  set  out  to 
look  for  her  again.  The  legend  adds  thaj; 
it  was  even  a  great  happiness  to  him  to  have 
succeeded  in  finding  her,  and  though  she 
would  have  preferred  his  return  grounded 
on  more  tender  reasons,  such  as  deep  regret 
for  his  treatment  of  her  and  not  merely 
because  he  felt  the  want  of  her,  she  never- 
theless, touched  by  his  misery,  forgot  and 
forgave.  This  is  the  only  point  where  this 
naive  story  falls  short  in  perfect  likeness  to 
another  story  that  is  just  now  passing  under 
our  eyes.  There  is  not  one  of  the  adven- 
tures of  this  prince  that  we  can  not  compare 
to  our  own  adventures,  since  we  banished 
from  our  heart  (some  fifty  years  ago)  the 
old  Christian  faith  that  had  been  for  so 
many  centuries  our  trusted  and  faithful 
companion.  ...  It  had  seemed  to  us 
too  childish,  we  grew  tired  of  it,  it  inter- 
fered too  much  with  our  mclinations  and  we 
too  went  about  the  world  in  search  of  a  new 
worship.  Our  hearts  grew  young  in  the 
free  air,  and  not  a  phantom  rose  before  our 


32      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

view  but  we  decked  it  with  all  the  graces. 
First  we  adored  science.  This  is  what  Ke- 
nan recommended  us  to  do  in  exchange  for 
the  faith  he  took  from  us.  He  set  against 
the  '  unclean  and  puerile  ideal,'  he  professed 
to  find  in  Christianity  '  the  superior  sanctity 
of  the  scientific  ideal.'  Science  alone,  he 
said,  was  pure.  But  after  forcing  ourselves 
to  love  the  substitute,  it  was  far  from  giv- 
ing us  the  moral  support  we  used  to  get 
from  Christianity.  In  fact  w^e  found  it  I'e- 
f  used  us  everything,  even  the  smallest  grain 
of  solid  truth.  Then,  after  how  many 
other  specters  did  we  run  and  found  them 
but  phantoms  that  melted  at  our  touch ! 
Like  the  prince  in  the  story  we  were  now 
left  alone,  but  just  as  little  as  he,  were  we 
able  to  bear  our  solitude.  For  doing  or 
for  dreaming  —  for  living  or  dying  we  must 
have  a  faith.  This  is  why  some  of  us  have 
taken  courage,  and  have  begun  to  deplore 
aloud  the  loss  of  the  old  faith."  A  more 
earnest  testimony  than  this  to  the  present 
day  reaction  it  would  be  hard  indeed  to  find. 


The  popular  reception  given  to  M.  Tissot's 
marvelous  artistic  work  in  Paris,  of  which 
M.  Wyzewa  writes  with  such  sympathy  in 
the  article  from  which  the  foregoing  is 
taken,  is  another  very  striking  sign  of  this 


SIGNS   OF   THE   REACTION.  33 

reaction.  This  great  artist  has  devoted  ten 
years  of  his  life  to  the  accomplishment  of 
this  one  work  —  no  other  than  the  painted 
story  of  the  life  of  Christ.  He  went  out 
to  Palestine,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  with  the 
Gospel  in  his  hand,  and  there  studied  on 
the  spot  all  the  places  where  that  divine 
life  was  lived.  The  result  of  his  work  was 
exhibited  at  the  Salon  of  the  Champ-de- 
Mars  in  1894.  It  forms  a  series  of  no  less 
than  eight  hundred  and  sixty-five  different 
studies. 

It  needed  the  courage  of  a  great  and  sin- 
cere mind,  thus  to  set  once  more  before  the 
eyes  of  the  most  frivolous  population  in  the 
world,  the  entire  life  of  our  Savior.  It  was 
also  a  strange  venture,  at  this  late  date,  to 
handle  again  a  subject  exhausted  by  the 
labors  of  so  many  others.  Had  it  not  been 
treated  a  thousand  times  from  every  aspect 
and  had  not  the  worldly-minded  long  since 
turned  weariedly  away  from  it?  Nothing 
could  possibly  be  thought  of  less  inviting 
to  the  mundane  Parisians.  Yet  he  never 
faltered,  and  to  leave  no  mistake  about  his 
object,  he  appended  to  each  painted  scene 
an  explanatory  note  of  his  own,  which  con- 
fessed his  faith  and  evidenced  the  reverent 
spirit  which  prompted  his  work.  His  suc- 
cess was  beyond  all  expectation.  Seldom 
has   such   a  reception  been  given  to   any 


34      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

artistic  work  in  our  time.  For  three 
months,  immense  crowds  invaded  the  gal- 
leries in  the  Champ-de-Mars.  Surprise, 
respect,  unstinted  admiration  were  the 
tribute  paid  to  this  supreme  effort  of  Chris- 
tian genius,  and  an  eminent  art  critic,  not 
by  any  means  of  a  pious  turn  himself,  has 
declared,  that  it  was  impossible  for  any  one 
who  came  there  to  leave  without  feeling 
the  better  for  having  come  and  seen.  This 
splendid  work  seems  like  an  inspiration. 
It  was  completed  about  the  time  that 
Ernest  Renan  lay  dying  in  Paris.  He  was 
the  Arch-Arian  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
His  cynical  impudence  in  speaking  of  our 
Lord  was  never  surpassed.  He  called  him 
"  that  delicious  young  man  from  Galilee," 
and  in  another  place  "  that  delightful  char- 
latan I  "  His  treatment  of  the  sacred  life 
had  destroyed  all  idea  of  Christ's  divinity 
in  thousands  of  minds.  And  now  almost 
at  the  door  of  his  dying  chamber,  a  reviv- 
ing elixir  was  administered  to  the  faith  he 
so  powerfully  strove  to  kill. 


On  the  same  lines,  though  in  a  different 
way,  the  distinguished  Russian  writer, Count 
Leo  Tolstoi,  has  also  been  helping  on  the 
reaction.  That  a  layman  of  wealth,  high 
position,  and  scholarly  attainments  should 


SIGNS   OF  THE   REACTION.  35 

occupy  himself  in  a  serious  and  reverent 
spirit,  editing  a  version  of  the  Gospel,  at 
this  late  hour  of  our  era,  is  very  disconcert- 
ing- to  the  Huxleyan  minds  that  have  so  long 
lahored  to  discredit  them.  His  book  which 
bears  the  title  simply  of  "The  Gospels" 
was  published  in  1894  and  in  the  following 
year  was  translated  into  French. 

In  the  introduction  he  declares  at  once 
the  motive  of  his  writing,  —  "  for  me,"  he 
says,  "  there  is  nothing  at  all  so  important 
as  this  hght  which  for  eighteen  hundred 
years  has  illuminated  mankind."  He  ex- 
cuses himself  from  all  discussion  as  to  the 
personality  and  history  of  Christ  and  he 
adds  —  ''  it  is  enough  for  me  that  His  doc- 
trine is  the  only  one  that  gives  meaning  to 
my  life." 


It  is  also  a  significant  fact,  that  in  a  very 
recent  number  of  a  secular  American  mag- 
azine the  Viscount  Melchoir  de  Vogue,  a 
brilliant  member  of  the  French  Academy, 
should  announce  to  the  public  of  the  United 
States  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  greatest  of 
living  men  is  the  present  Pope.  And  this 
is  not  an  obiter  dictum^  it  is  the  thesis  of  the 
article  and  in  proof  of  this  rather  bold  asser- 
tion he  alleges  that  the  Pope,  as  '^an  en- 
lightened guide  in  the  supernatural  unto  his 


36      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

fellow-man,  has  been  of  more  practical  use 
to  them,  and  has  afforded  them  more  val- 
uable help,  than  any  of  his  contempo- 
raries." 

As  a  psychological  puzzle,  I  am  tempted 
to  mention  here  a  somewhat  strange  coinci- 
dence. While  M.  de  Vogue  was  engaged 
on  this  serious  and  evidently  sincere  piece 
of  work,  which  is  also  characterized  by  all 
the  thoroughness  of  his  great  ability,  he  was 
at  the  same  time,  in  another  quarter,  pub- 
lishing a  French  story  of  a  Inbricious  kind. 
This  story  bears  the  title  of  ' '  Jean  d^ 
Agreve,^^  and  treats  of  a  strange  phase  of 
illicit  love.  It  may,  perhaps,  be  pleaded  in 
excuse,  that  the  utter  loathing  created  by 
the  vivid  picture  drawn  of  his  hero  as  a 
worthless,  egotistic,  self-pampered,  un- 
cleanly and  sensual  pagan  coxcomb,  and 
by  the  no  less  repulsive  picture  of  the  hero- 
ine, as  an  utterly  sensual  married  woman, 
a  mere  animal  in  her  sensuality,  can  not 
but  influence  people  in  favor  of  the  higher 
and  purer  life — but  he  does  not  say  so. 
That  is  a  risky  way  to  inculcate  virtue. 


WHAT  PROVOKED   THE   PROTEST.  37 

Chapter    III. 
What  Provoked  the  Protest.   ' 

I  think  it  is  clear  from  the  foregoing, 
that  the  reaction  against  the  scientists,  of 
the  anti-supernatural  and  anti-religious 
class,  has  commenced  and  most  likely  will 
continue.  It  will  be  helpful  to  that  end, 
and  not  without  interest  to  many  readers, 
to  explain  why  people  are  dissatisfied  with 
the  researches  of  the  agnostic  scientists. 

The  reason  is  short  and  intelligible  — 
their  conckisions  bring  no  comfort,  and  are 
of  no  use  to  any  human  mind  in  answering 
the  questions  that  are  always  present  to 
men  —  whence  have  I  come,  why  am  I  here, 
and  what  is  to  become  of  meV 

For  instance : 

The  last  question,  personally  and  vitally, 
affects  everybody.  There  is  no  more  cer- 
tain fact,  than  that  we  shall  not  be  very 
long  in  existence  here.  What  is  going  to 
happen  then?  Every  individual  human  be- 
ing wants  to  know  something  definite  about 
that.  The  universal  fact  of  death  makes 
it  so  personally  interesting  to  each  and 
every  one.  Well,  when  the  "  scientific 
method  "  and  its  conclusions  are  eagerly 
scrutinized  for  information  on  this  point  of 


38      THE   KEACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

such  intense  interest,  people  are  amazed  to 
find,  after  all  the  parade  made  of  them  in 
these  recent  years,  that  they  are  dumb  on 
this  vital  question.  The  utmost  the  hon- 
ester  scientists  say  is  —  We  do  not  know. 
Some  less  scrupulous  say — There  is  noth- 
ing to  follow  or  to  happen.  But  that  is 
not  honest  for  they  give  no  proof  —  not  the 
shadow  of  a  proof  of  their  assertion. 

The  former,  indeed,  advise  every  one  not 
to  trouble  about  it  —  to  let  themselves  go 
with  the  great  tide  of  human  life  into  the 
void  —  the  unknown.  There  is  nothing  to 
fear,  no  cause  for  alarm.  N^ow  the  great 
mass  of  men  never  have  believed,  and' never 
will  believe  that.  It  is  no  wonder  their  dis- 
appointment is  great.  An  apt  pupil  of  the 
"scientific  method"  in  her  ''  Story  of  an 
African  Farm"  declares,  rather  helplessly, 
that  "the  tears  of  the  mourners  and  the 
mud  of  the  grave  cement  the  power  of  the 
priests!"  Rather  halting  logic  in  our 
friend.  One  would  think,  it  was  the  priests 
invented  death.  They,  poor  men,  have  got 
to  face  the  muddy  grave  as  well  as  other 
people,  and  are  quite  as  much  interested  as 
to  what  is  to  become  of  them,  as  everybody 
else,  but  they  are  not  at  all  likely  to  be  so 
daring  or  reckless,  as  to  lend  themselves  to 
deceptions  about  a  matter,  that  involves 
their  own  outlook  and  well-being  in  com- 


WHAT  PROVOKED   THE   PROTEST.  39 

mon  with  all  others.  This  is  a  specimen  of 
predjnd ice-raising,  which  begets  that  daring 
attitude  in  some,  but  which  happily  does 
not  satisfy  the  multitude. 


But  though  the  ''  scientific  method  "  has 
nothing  to  tell  about  the  mysterious  future 
after  death,  it  has  a  great  deal  to  say  about 
our  origin. 

On  this  ground,  science  is  much  more  at 
home  and  very  confident.  For,  unlike  the 
future,  the  past  at  all  events  is  real  and  ex- 
plorable,  and  science  claims  it  as  its  own 
peculiar  province  for  research.  For  the 
last  forty  years,  lakes  of  ink  and  reams 
of  paper  have  been  expended  on  reports 
by  the  scientist  of  their  independent  search 
across  the  ages  for  the  first  vital  spark. 
To  prosecute  their  researches,  quite  un- 
shackled by  any  preconceived  notions,  they 
abolished  and  wiped  out  all  previous  maps 
and  charts,  which  used  to  serve  humanity 
as  a  guide  over  the  distant  and  difficult 
country  of  its  past.  These  maps  and 
charts  they  declared  to  be  utterly  useless 
and  misleading,  and  were  accountable  for 
all  the  myths  and  superstitions  about  the 
origin  of  mankind,  which  had  so  long  de- 
graded the  human  mind.  They  would  xm- 
dertake   this  exploration  anew,  with  com- 


40      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

mon  sense  and  enlightened  reason  aided  by 
the  modern  scientific  method,  assolegiiides. 
They  would  tramp  every  inch  of  that 
ground  to  its  utmost  limits  for  themselves, 
taking  nothing  from  hearsay  or  tradition. 
They  would  strip  it  of  all  its  mysteries  and 
bogeys,  and  bring  back  but  the  plain,  sim- 
ple answers  that  honest  nature  had  to  give. 
So  they  began,  and  ever  since  they  have 
led  the  world  a  lengthening  and  weary  walk 
through  the  domain  of  time. 

At  first  the  way  was  pleasant  and  inter- 
esting enough.  It  lay  through  the  zoolog- 
ical department  of  the  earth.  Here  as  long 
as  the  study  was  confined  to  comparative 
anatomy  —  the  bone-structure  of  the  vari- 
ous animal  families,  their  similarities  and 
dissimilarities,  it  was  curious  and  not  unin- 
teresting. Years  of  patient  skill  and  labor 
were  devoted  to  this.  To  most  people,  the 
motive  of  this  minute  curiosity  about  the 
formation  of  the  animal  world,  would  have 
been  to  admire  the  skill  of  the  original  de- 
signer of  those  marvelous  structures  (in 
which  man  had  nothing  whatever  to  do), 
and  be  lost  in  wonder  at  the  resources  of  his 
great  power.  But  the  scientists  never 
stopped  to  call  attention  to  that.  Their 
object  was  to  find  out  what  man  really  was 
and  how  he  came  to  be. 

After  more  years  of  patient  and  minute 


WHAT   PROVOKED   THE   PROTEST.  41 

study  of  animal  structure,  a  deliberate  and 
definite  pronouncement  was  at  length  made 
on  the  subject.  Everybody  now  knows 
what  this  pronouncement  was,  and  with 
what  mingled  feelings  it  was  received  by 
the  world  when  first  put  forth  by  Mr.  Dar- 
win. As  the  result  of  his  long  studies  he  de- 
clared, that  man  was  not  always  as  he  is,  that 
he  did  not  enjoy,  as  was  hitherto  supposed, 
a  distinct  and  different  creation  from  the 
animals,  that  he  passed  through  other  forms 
before  he  attained  his  present  shape,  and  in 
a  process  which  he  called  by  the  now  famous 
word  evolution^  man  was  shown  to  have 
"descended"  from  the  brute  creation.  He 
even  specified  the  immediate  ancestor  from 
which,  as  far  as  his  studies  then  warranted 
him  to  say,  he  was  gradually  evolved  in 
the  animal  world.  Many  think  Mr.  Darwin 
made  a  fatal  mistake  in  thus  particularizing, 
for  it  was  then  the  world  laughed  irrev- 
erently, and  theories  that  move  to  laughter 
lose  all  their  dignity.  Though  he  clothed 
his  announcement  in  grave  words  of  learned 
sound  —  namely,  that  our  dear  ancestor 
was  quadrumanous^  "  arborial  in  his 
habits"  and  probahly  (a  concession,  as  he 
was  now  to  speak  more  plainly) ,  "  furnished 
with  a  tail ;"  the  facetious  world  caught  the 
meaning  at  once  —  "  oh,  we  are  descended 
from  monkeys  —  et  solvuntw  risu!     That 


42      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

was  a  severe  check  to  the  new  biolog-ical 
science  and  a  poor  reward  for  such  long  and 
arduous  labors. 

But  Mr.  Darwin  was  quite  serious,  and 
abated  nothing  in  his  arguments  and  his 
assertions.  His  co-workers  and  followers 
stood  by  him,  and  proclaimed  his  discovery  a 
triumph.  But  their  investigations  were  not 
going  to  end  with  our  "  quadrumanous  " 
friend,  who  was  given  to  climbing  trees 
and  was  "  probably  furnished  with  a  tail." 

Arrived  at  this  stage  of  man's  existence, 
the  free  investigators  were  only  now,  so  to 
speak,  securely  on  the  scent.  They  had 
yet  to  arrive  at  the  more  elementary  condi- 
tions of  his  earthly  life.  So,  for  many 
more  years,  they  wandered  back  through 
the  wastes  of  time.  They  searched  the 
rocks  for  fossils.  They  explored  the  caves, 
and  trawled  the  bed  of  the  sea  for  speci- 
mens of  life.  They  waded  through  swamps 
and  quagmires,  and  fished  for  tadpoles  and 
mud-fish.  Then  at  last  came  the  announce- 
ment that  the  utmost  limit  of  primal  living 
forms  had  been  reached.  There  in  the 
"  cells  "  of  those  minutest  creatures  lay  the 
"  f ons  et  origo  ' '  of  all  terrestrial  life.  They 
named  it  protoplastic  matter. 

From  the  mud-fish  through  varied  forms 
came  all  animals  ;  and  just  the  same  as  the 
rest,  from  the  mud-fish,  through   the  ape, 


WHAT   PROVOKED    THE    PROTEST.  43 

came  mankind  !  Not  long  since,  Mr.  Dar- 
win's fellow-scientists  and  pupils  erected  a 
statue  to  his  memory  in  his  native  town  of 
Shrewsbury,  Shropshire,  England  —  pre- 
sumably in  gratitude  for  his  elevating  dis- 
covery as  to  their  descent.  "  Hey  !  a  mad 
world,  my  masters." 

Since  Darwin's  time,  further  investiga- 
tions have  been  made  about  this  protoplastic 
matter.  The  scientists  did  not  wish  the 
world  to  suppose,  that  they  knew  nothing 
of  its  nature.  They  brought  chemistry  to 
bear  on  it.  They  took  it  into  the  laboratory, 
set  out  their  crucibles,  retorts,  solvents  and 
stills  and  worked  out  an  analysis  of  this 
subtle  substance  —  result ;  four  gases,  oxy- 
gen, hydrogen,  nitrogen  and  carbon  !  By 
evolution,  therefore,  man,  as  we  know 
him  —  "  the  thing  to  be  demonstrated  "  of 
the  scientists  —  was  at  one  time  a  monkey, 
sometime  previously — protoplasm,  and  prior 
to  that,  four  gases  !  But  the  ordinary  com- 
mon sense  of  men  will  not  be  satisfied  with 
these  results.  They  do  not  account  for 
man.  They  say  nothing  of  his  chief  attri- 
butes. How  is  he,  a  thinking  being,  of 
great  intelligence,  capable  of  self-reflection, 
self-guidance  and  self-government?  The 
agnostic  scientists  will  not  admit,  that  any- 
thing came  to  him  from  outside,  as  an  en- 
dowment or  the  act  of  another  being,  their 


44      THE   EEACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

sole  reason  for  not  doing  so,  being  the 
questionably  logical  one,  that  they  have 
found  no  evidence  of  any  creative  act  or 
creating  being.  A  negative  reason  like  this 
does  not  satisfy,  as  long  as  they  are  unable 
to  supply  a  positive  one,  and  assign  a  defi- 
nite cause  for  a  visible,  palpable,  undeniable 
fact,  namely,  intelligent  life.  It  will  not 
do  to  merely  inform  mankind,  that  aborigi- 
nally they  were  four  gases.  They  inevita- 
bly want  to  know  how  the  four  gases  came 
to  think,  to  reflect,  to  make  thought  rule 
action  and  account  to  themselves  for  their 
sensations. 

So  for  the  practical  minded,  all  those  re- 
searches of  the  scientists  into  the  origin  of 
man  and  the  sources  of  life,  are  entirely  un- 
satisfying. They  have  failed  to  indicate 
any  intelligible  or  adequate  cause  for  com- 
posite human  life,  such  as  we  all  know  it  to 
be.  They  are  dumb  before  the  universally 
interesting  question,  which  will  never  cease 
to  be  asked.  Whence  are  we? 

One  of  the  most  influential  of  those  scien- 
tists —  the  man  who  gave  the  name  agnos- 
tic to  the  sect  (by  no  means  new),  not  long 
before  his  death,  made  the  bold,  and  what 
seemed  to  him,  the  consoling  statement  that 
"Christianity  was  driven  to  its  last  ditch." 
With  gratitude  the  Christian  may  thank  the 
man  for  teaching:   him   that   word.     That 


WHAT   PROVOKED   THE   PROTEST.  45 

question  —  whence  are  we  —  is  a  final  and 
a  fatal  ditch  for  "  science."  Further  efforts, 
indeed,  have  been  made  to  scramble  out  of 
it.  Some  relied  on  the  theory  of  spontane- 
ous generation,  and  elaborate  experiments 
were  patiently  made  to  sustain  it.  But  the 
leading  scientists  honestly  admitted  that 
this  was  not  sustainable  and,  as  is  well 
known,  is  now  totally  abandoned  by  the 
scientific.  This  conception  of  life,  or  the 
living  principle  producing  itself,  involves  a 
mystery  as  great  as  any  in  the  revelation, 
which  those  scientists  affect  to  discard. 
Yet  it  was  an  unconscious  adaptation  of  the 
eternal  begetting  of  the  Word  in  the  God- 
head described  by  St.  John.  But  to  trans- 
fer what  is,  in  the  eternal  and  necessary 
being,  to  the  contingent  and  transitory,  m 
not  in  the  rules  of  logic. 

Others  have  since  made  a  wilder,  and 
bolder  plunge,  to  get  out  of  the  difficulty. 
The  appearance  of  initial  life  on  this  planet 
they  say  is  easily  explained  by  the  fact,  that 
the  earth  in  its  course  through  space  encoun- 
ters a  lot  of  cosmic  dust,  which  adheres  to 
it,  and  thus,  mingled  with  this  dust,  living 
germs  of  protoplastic,  thinking  matter 
found  a  home  on  our  globe.  But  this  in- 
genious theory  is  as  little  final  as  the  others, 
for  where  or  when  in  cosmic  space  did  this 
living  protoplasm  get  its  life,  and  how  came 


46      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

it  to  be  endowed  with  the  wonderful  poten- 
tialities, of  which  the  mental  and  physical 
faculties  of  men  and  women  are  the  devel- 
opment?    That  will  not  do. 

Thus  the  labors  of  unaided  science  have 
failed  to  give  us  any  light  on  the  question 
which  80  personally  interests  every  living 
human  being  —  Whence  are  we? 


There  is  another  question  just  as  pressing, 
and  more  important  to  men,  on  which  the 
independent  scientists,  according  to  their 
engagement,  are  bound  to  satisfy  them  — 
Why  are  we  here  at  all? 

Their  investigation  of  this  question  —  the 
purpose  of  human  life  —  has  not  resulted  in 
anything  pleasanter  and  more  encouraging 
for  us  than  their  dissertations  on  our  origin. 

In  Mr.  Darwin's  books  the  "  Descent  of 
Man'^'^  and  ''The  Origin  of  Species ^"^"^  as 
well  as  in  the  writings  of  those  who  follow 
and  indorse  him,  all  we  learn  is,  that  man- 
kind has  been  cast  into  the  melee  of  this 
world  —  to  fight !  to  struggle  for  his  very 
existence,  and  in  that  struggle  to  prove  his 
fitness  to  live  by  "  surviving." 

I  do  not  think  it  exaggeration  to  say, 
that  this  is  absolutely  all  that  can  be  learned 
from  those  bulky  volumes  on  the  vital 
question  —  Why    are    men    here    at    all? 


WHAT   PROVOKED    THE    PROTEST.  47 

When  you  come  to  extract  from  those 
books  any  practical  or  serviceable  meaniRg" 
or  conclusions,  the  only  wonderful  thing 
left  you  to  admire,  is  that  men  could  write 
so  much  and  say  so  little.  But  when  their 
conclusion  is  arrived  at,  it  is  only  vexation 
of  spirit.  Of  what  use  or  comfort  is  it  to 
humanity  to  be  told,  that  there  is  a  com- 
pelling and  invariable  law  of  struggle  in 
animated  nature,  in  which  the  weak  must 
always  go  down  before  the  strong — the 
ill-suited  yield  to  the  "  fittest."  For  whose 
particular  amusement  this  rather  savage 
game  was  invented,  or  to  what  use  the  sur- 
vivors were  to  put  their  "  survival,"  these 
writers  do  not  seem  to  have  any  sort  of 
care.  Why,  a  prize-ring  has  more  meaning 
than  the  theater  of  human  life,  in  their 
view.  Not  to  seem  entirely  barren,  how- 
ever, in  their  speculations,  those  ignorers 
of  a  divine  purpose  apply  evolution  to  man 
in  his  "survived"  stage.  He  is  not  by 
any  means  done  with  evolution  after  merely 
surviving.  That  is  a  slow,  majestic,  if 
despotic,  process,  which  is  never  more  to 
let  go  its  grip.  Formed  into  society  as  a 
survived  species,  man  must  go  on  evolut- 
ing,  constantly  tending  to  a  state  of  greater 
perfectability  and  so  ad  infinitum.  That 
may  be  all  very  well  for  the  individuals  of 
the  race  who  may  reach  that  end,  but  what 


48      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE, 

about  those  who  have  passed  off  the  scene, 
those  who  are  passing  now,  and  who  will 
daily  pass  off  through  "  death's  cruel  gate,'' 
before  tasting  the  delights  of  this  vague 
perfectability  of  the  scientists.  Truly  a 
vexation  of  spirit.  And  that  is  all  they 
have  to  say.  And  if  asked  whether  the 
deeds,  done  in  the  days  of  his  surviving, 
have  any  bearing  personally  and  as  an  in- 
dividual on  man's  condition  after  he  dies, 
or  what  is  to  become  of  him  then  —  they 
say,  "  Oh,  W'C  are  agnostics ;  you  must  not 
ask  us  anything  about  these  mysterious 
things;  we  do  not  know,  for  science  has 
told  us  w^e  can  not  know  anything  about 
them.  Science  has  not  discovered  any  in- 
telligent Creator,  nor  any  meaning  in  life, 
beyond  a  struggle  for  existence,  never  came 
across  such  a  thing  as  a  soul,  nor  discovered 
any  trace  of  any  other  existence  or  world 
for  man  but  this."  This  is  the  last  word 
of  science,  so  turn  down  the  lights,  the 
lecture  is  over,  and  the  audience  is  left 
groping  and  bumping  against  each  other 
in  the  dark. 

These  unsatisfying  results  of  agnostic 
science  have  provoked  the  protest  of  which 
we  saw  the  clear  indications  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  and  most  people  will  allow  that  it 
was  time,  for  the  credit  of  common  sense, 
to  protest. 


AGNOSTIC    SOCIALISM.  49 

Chapter    IV. 
Agnostic  Socialism. 

The  frequent  failure  of  the  "  scientific 
method  "  applied  to  the  condition  of  life,  is 
another  reason  for  the  reaction .  The  scien- 
tific method  of  course  makes  a  tabula  rasa  of 
all  previous  religious  traditions.  Religion, 
that  is,  a  knowledge  of  supernatural  things 
and  their  relation  to  us,  science  has  declared 
unproven.  It  is,  therefore,  to  be  set  aside, 
and  not  taken  into  account,  in  the  prob- 
lems of  man's  conduct  and  existence. 

When  men,  then,  in  our  time,  came  to 
think,  on  account  of  the  great  inequality  of 
fortune  and  increase  of  want,  that  society 
should  be  reconstructed,  or  at  least  read- 
justed —  many  schemes  were  proposed  for 
this  end.  Most  of  them  proceeded  on  agnos- 
tic lines,  that  is,  were  purely  materialist  and 
secular,  and  omitted  all  calculation  on  man's 
spiritual  nature,  its  demands,  its  defects  and 
its  aspirations.  A  fair  type  of  these  pro- 
posals is  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Bellamy's  book, 
"  Looking  Backward,'^''  He  did  well  to  lay 
the  scene  of  it  in  the  year  2000,  when  none 
of  his  readers  will  be  there  to  enjoy  the 
delightful  happiness  of  his  reconstructed  so- 
ciety.    However,  we  have  the  advantage  of 


50      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

having  witnessed  some  experiments  in  this 
reconstruction  so  brilhantly  depicted  on 
paper.  It  will  be  interesting  and  conclu- 
sive to  give  the  story  of  a  few  of  them. 

In  1894,  in  the  city  of  Brisbane,  Queens- 
land, a  lame  printer,  named  Lane,  assumed 
a  mission  to  his  fellow-trademen  and  labor- 
ers, inviting  their  co-operation  for  a  new 
social  scheme.  He  had  long  been  known 
as  a  labor  organizer,  and  a  leader  in  the 
unions.  But  nearly  all  the  strikes  he  had 
engaged  in,  and  helped  on  so  actively,  had 
ended  badly  in  the  long  run  for  the 
workers. 

This  led  him  to  think  it  was  impossible 
to  improve  the  social  conditions  of  the  work- 
ingman,  while  surrounded  by  the  class 
prejudices  and  the  adverse  influences  of  the 
wealthy  in  society  as  at  present  constituted. 
Suppose  they  could  be  moved  away  from 
those  surroundings  and,  putting  oceans  be- 
tween them  and  those  irritating,  stupid 
class  divisions,  and  given  a  chance  to  found 
society  anew  on  the  lines  laid  down  by  the 
clever  theorists  he  had  long  studied  and  ad- 
mired, there  was  no  reason  why  they  should 
not  succeed. 

It  was  a  poor  compliment  to  the  Queens- 
land government,  whose  legislation  in  favor 
of  the  workingman  had  for  some  time  been 
notorious,  and  by  some  people  deemed  far 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  51 

too  socialist  and  radical.  But  it  failed  to 
satisfy  the  aspirations  of  Mr.  Lane  and  his 
friends.  He  drew  up  an  outline  of  his  pro- 
ject, and  addressed  it  not  only  to  the  work- 
ingmen  of  Queensland,  but  also  to  the 
worldngmen  of  all  the  Australian  colonies. 
As  many  as  could  contribute  a  little  to  a 
common  fund  necessary  to  start  them  (I 
think  it  was  £60),  were  invited  to  come 
away  to  Paraguay  in  South  America,  and 
found  a  New  Australia.  Nor  was  this  a 
step  in  the  dark,  for  Lane  had  been  in  com- 
munication with  Paraguayan  authorities 
who,  anxious  for  immigration  and  too  poor 
to  pay  for  it,  like  its  richer  neighbors  of 
the  Argentina,  welcomed  his  proposals  and 
offered  grants  of  land  in  the  interior.  This 
was  a  great  inducement,  but  a  greater  was 
the  perfect  freedom  they  were  to  enjoy.  No 
clergyman  or  preacher  of  any  kind  was  to 
be  allowed  to  join.  They  were  to  have  no 
church  or  profess  any  religion.  No  law- 
yers were  to  come  —  they  should  have  no 
courts  nor  police.  Community  of  interests, 
and  as  much  as  possible  community  of 
goods,  was  to  secure  agreement  and  exclu- 
sion of  all  class  distinction,  and  guarantee 
good  fellowship  and  happiness.  Well-or- 
dered industry,  without  the  slavery  and 
stigma  of  labor,  would  insure  prosperity 
without  the  unnecessary  abundance   which 


52      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

had  bred  the  luxury  and  idleness  so  cor- 
rupting and  baneful  to  the  old  society. 

Hundreds  of  applications  poured  in. 
The  money  was  freely  deposited.  Lane 
chartered  a  large  sailing  vessel  and  had  her 
laden  (in  Sydney  harbor)  with  provisions 
and  implements  requisite  for  pioneering. 
So  numerous  had  been  the  applications  that 
all  could  not  be  accommodated  on  the  first 
voyage.  A  selection  of  about  300  was 
made,  and  in  due  time  with  a  great  flourish 
from  the  labor  world,  and  an  ovation  from 
the  unemployed,  in  which  Sydney  seems 
always  to  abound,  they  set  sail  for  their 
New  Australia  beyond  the  wide  Pacific. 

It  is  a  weary  way  round  the  Horn  to  the 
La  Plata,  and  from  the  banks  of  that  fa- 
mous river  to  the  site  of  the  New  Australia 
it  is  a  long  trek,  as  they  say  in  Africa.  So 
those  of  us,  who  felt  an  interest  in  watching 
the  result  of  this  extraordinary  modern 
socialist  experiment,  had  to  possess  our 
souls  in  patience  when  the  good  ship  was  lost 
to  view.  It  was  undoubtedly  a  remarka- 
ble event  in  our  times,  and  full,  of  interest 
for  every  one  who  gave  a  thought  to  the 
great  social  problem.  Those  men  had  gone 
out  to  teach  the  world  a  realistic  lesson  in 
building  up  the  proper  kind  of  human  soci- 
ety. They  would  put  to  a  practical  test 
the  favorite  paper  social  theories    that   of 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  53 

late  had  got  such  wide  circulation.  The 
world  had  reason  to  feel  obliged  to  them. 
A  valuable  wisdom  was  to  be  learned  from 
the  result. 

Nearly  a  year  went  before  we  had  any 
tidings.  Lane's  first  report  of  things 
was  favorable  enough.  All  had  arrived  in 
safety.  The  Paraguayan  Government  had 
been  as  good  as  its  word  and  besides  had 
been  very  helpful.  There  was  just  a  hint 
that  great  difficulties  had  to  be  overcome, 
there  were  many  things  which  could  not  be 
foreseen  nor  provided  for  beforehand.  Still 
it  was  too  soon  to  be  either  too  sanguine  or 
discouraged.  Meanwhile  he  recommended 
that  the  applicants,  who  could  not  be  accom- 
modated on  the  first  trip,  should  now  be  for- 
warded with  fresh  supplies,  and  he  promised 
that  the  newcomers  should  find  everything 
in  good  shape  and  should  not  have  to  con- 
tend with  the  discomforts  of  first  settle- 
ment. 

(By  the  way,  the  lands  of  one  of  the  old 
Jesuit  missions  once  so  famous  and  flourish- 
ing in  that  distant  land  had  been  assigned 
them.)  On  this  report  two  hundred  more,  if 
I  rightly  remember,  set  out  on  the  second 
expedition. 

They  were  not  very  long  gone,  when  a 
rumor  from  another  source  reached  the 
Sydney  press  that  things  were   not  going 


54      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

smoothly  in  Lane's  Utopia,  with  a  caution 
to  other  intending  emigrants  to  await 
further  developments.  This  caused  some 
uneasiness,  and  the  news  of  the  arrival  of 
the  vessel  in  the  Plata  was  anxiously  looked 
for.  It  came.  At  Monte  Video  the  new 
emigrants  were  surprised  to  find  some  mem- 
bers of  the  first  expedition  waiting  for 
them.  No,  they  had  not  come  to  greet 
them  and  show  them  the  way  —  they  were 
waiting  for  a  chance  to  get  back  I  Alas  ! 
poor  humanity  ;  it  was  the  old  story  —  dis- 
agreements, disputes,  jealousies,  schism. 
The  thing  was  not  working,  they  said,  and 
was  not  going  to  work.  Lane  was  a  dictator. 
They  fancied  they  had  come  out  to  be  rid 
of  that  kind  of  thing,  but  they  were 
deceived,  and  so  on. 

Having  come  so  far  and  the  complainants 
being  comparatively  few,  the  second  batch 
continued  on  their  way  to  see  for  them- 
selves. 

There  was  silence  again  for  another  inter- 
val on  the  subject  in  Sydney.  Then  more 
rumors  found  their  way  into  the  papers 
from  time  to  time.  I^ow  it  was  an  interview 
with  a  returned  'New  Australian,  again  it 
was  a  defense  from  Lane  and  explanations 
from  his  friends,  then  recriminations  until 
people  did  not  know  what  to  think.  After 
a  while  came  a  consular  report  that  distress 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  55 

was  prevailing  among  the  immigrants ;  that 
many  had  found  their  way  to  the  coast,  were 
destitute  among  a  people  whose  language 
was  not  theirs,  and  were  begging  passages 
home  in  English  ships  ! 

Last  scene  in  this  eventful  history:  A 
member  of  the  'New  South  Wales  Parlia- 
ment unfolded  to  the  House  so  dismal  a 
story  of  the  plight  in  which  these  New 
Australians  found  themselves,  so  far  away 
in  a  foreign  land,  that  a  motion  for  their 
relief  was  generously  carried,  and  measures 
were  sanctioned  to  facilitate  their  return 
home.  So  ended  this  scheme  to  recon- 
struct society  on  the  sciencific  method  of 
ignoring  all  knowledge  of  man's  first  be- 
ginning or  last  end.  The  promoters  forgot 
one  all-important  matter,  that  whoever 
would  reconstruct  society,  where  it  needs 
reconstruction,  should  first  reconstruct 
human  nature.  And  science  has  nothing 
to  say  about  that. 


The  second  case  is  still  more  instructive, 
for  this  second  attempt  at  solving  the  social 
trouble,  was  backed  by  all  the  resources 
of  well-ordered  government  and  legislative 
authority.  It  had  none  of  the  drawbacks 
of   emigration  nor  the  heart-breaks  of  dis- 


56      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCS. 

tant  exile.     It  was  carried  out  comfortably 
at  home. 

There  is  no  place  in  the  world  where  sec- 
ular socialism,  that  is,  a  socialism  without 
any  reference  to  God,  man's  relation  to  his 
will  or  laws,  conscience  or  any  supernatural 
consideration  whatsoever,  has  had  so  fair  a 
field  or  so  much  in  its  favor  as  in  the 
Australian  Colonies.  Universal  suffrage, 
which,  in  one  of  them  at  least,  includes 
women,  has  given  the  making  of  the  laws 
into  the  hands  of  the  so-called  common  peo- 
ple, because  in  a  new  country  the  common 
people  are  for  a  long  time  in  the  immense 
majority.  The  policy  of  the  governors  sent 
from  England  is,  as  far  as  I  have  seen,  not 
to  interfere  with  any  domestic  legislative 
arrangements  which  the  colonists  see  fit  to 
make.  This  legislation,  notably  in  Queens- 
land, South  Australia  and  ISTew  Zealand,  is 
inspired  by  all  the  modern  secularist  social 
doctrines.  Equalization  of  wealth,  leveling 
class  distinctions,  expropriation  of  large 
landholders,  the  land  for  the  people,  re- 
sumption by  government  of  public  convey- 
ance, telegraphic  and  telephonic  service 
(an  immense  source  of  patronage)  public 
funds  to  be  advanced  to  the  people  for 
private  enterprise,  chiefly  agricultural  how- 
ever, easy  marriage  laws  and  facilities  for 
divorce,  free,  secular,  and  compulsory  edu- 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  57 

cation,  perfect  independence  in  voting,  no 
privilege  on  account  of  class  or  calling, 
accorded  by  the  State  —  such  is  the  pro- 
gramme. Surely  never  before  had  the 
"people"  such  a  chance  to  realize  their 
dreams  of  prosperity  and  social  happi- 
ness. Let  us  see  how  much  of  that  they 
have  attained.  Ten  years  ought  to  yield 
results  enough  to  judge  by,  and  that  is 
about  the  time  the  Legislatures  have  been 
cleared  of  the  old  conservative,  exclusive 
and  aristocratic  control.  I  shall  take  the 
Colony  with  which  I  am  best  acquainted  — 
'New  Zealand.  In  1896  there  were  more 
prisoners  in  the  immense  jails  of  Auckland, 
Wellington,  Christchurch,  and  Dunedin 
than  in  1886.  The  four  large  asylums  for 
the  insane  were  overcrowded  in  1896,  the 
smallest  accommodating  five  or  six  hundred 
patients.  In  1893,  the  most  dangerous 
and  damaging  labor  strikes  brought  trade 
almost  to  a  standstill,  and  caused  much 
privation  and  suffering.  These  few  facts 
speak  for  themselves.  Popular  legislation, 
so  far,  left  humanity  pretty  much  as  it  found 
it,  perhaps  a  trifle  worse.  Yet  "  labor  mem- 
bers "  were  numerous  in  the  legislative  As- 
sembly ;  into  the  Council  or  TJppei"  House 
were  introduced  four  journeymen,  a  boiler- 
maker,  a  printer,  a  compositor  and  a  joiner, 
while  among  the  Ministers,  the  real  rulers 


58      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE^ 

of  the  country,  were  an  ex-pedler  and  ex- 
miner  and  "pub"  proprietor  (these  two 
became  Prime  Ministers)  and  ex-grocer  and 
a  telegraph  clerk ! 

Their  greatest  experiment  in  social  equal- 
ity and  an  approach  to  orderly  communism 
was  the  founding  of  Village  Settlements, 
This  scheme  originated  in  JS'ew  Zealand  and 
was  adopted  later  in  some  of  the  Australian 
Colonies.  It  was  a  plain  attempt  to  give 
reality  to  Mr. Bellamy's  prophetic  visions  and 
therefore  interesting  to  follow  Us  fortunes. 

The  chief  features  of  the  scheme  were 
these :  — 

Associations  were  to  be  formed  consist- 
ing of  not  less  than  twenty  persons. 

To  each  member  of  the  association  the 
government  would  allot  sixty-four  acres  of 
land  and  a  money  loan  of  fifty  pounds  to 
be  repaid  at  five  pounds  a  year  for  ten  years. 
Five  pounds  an  acre  should  be  spent  each 
year  on  improvements.  Every  association 
was  to  be  directed  by  a  board  of  three  trus- 
tees, elected  by  the  villagers  from  their  own 
body.  No  member  should  have  any  private 
or  separate  interest  in  the  land,  save  the 
possession  and  use  of  that  portion  allotted 
to  him  by  the  Trustees. 

The  rules  of  living  and  work  were  very 
minute.  They  provided  for  the  kind  of 
members  to  be  admitted. 


AGNOSTIC  SOCIALISM.  59 

"Women  were  eligible.  Asiatics  were 
not.  ISTo  member  was  to  be  admitted  with- 
out the  sanction  of  the  board.  The  board 
had  power  to  expel  members  for  disobedi- 
ence to  rule,  or  absence  from  work  without 
leave.  An  appeal  lay  from  the  board's  de- 
cisions to  the  body  of  the  members,  who 
decided  by  vote  —  a  bare  majority  sufficing. 
The  board  resumed  possession  of  the  rights 
of  the  expelled,  and  even  of  the  deceased, 
realloting  the  property  for  the  benefit  of 
the  community.  The  board  was  elected 
for  one  year,  and  was  eligible  for  re-elec- 
tion. The  iDoard's  powers  were  very  ex- 
tensive. They  were  what  Fourier,  that 
patriarch  of  Socialism  in  France^  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  ago,  imagined  they 
ought  to  be.  Probably  the  promoters  of 
that  Parliamentary  Bill  at  the  antipodes, 
had  made  acquaintance  with  the  views  of 
that  fertile  dreamer.  The  board  was 
charged  with  the  responsibiUty  of  the  vil- 
lagers to  the  government.  They  regulated 
the  work  to  be  performed,  assigned  to  each 
one  his  task  and  prescribed  the  hours. 
The  board  managed  the  co-operative  stores, 
and  fixed  the  payment-in-kind  to  be  made 
to  each  family  —  money  currency  was  to  be 
dispensed  with.  The  functions  of  mayor, 
corporation  and  magistrate  were  discharged 
by  the  board  and  they  were  besides  consti- 


60      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

tuted  inspectors  of  domestic  arrangements 
and  guardians  of  the  general  welfare  — 
in  fact  such  a  Pooli-Bah  was  never  seen  as 
this  board  of  the  Village  Settlement. 

As  regards  the  earnings,  it  was  arranged 
that  two-thirds  were  to  be  distributed  as 
dividends,  the  other  third  reserved  for  in- 
terest and  improvements.  Any  one  in- 
capacitated from  work,  without  fault, 
would  continue  to  participate  to  the  full 
share  in  results. 

The  villagers  were  to  show  deference  and 
respect  to  the  members  of  the  board. 
Residence  was  compulsory.  All  absences 
should  be  duly  authorized,  save  a  half- 
month's  holiday  in  the  year,  which  was  a 
right.  No  buying  or  selling  was  to  be 
permitted  in  the  settlement  without  the 
knowledge  and  sanction  of  the  board.  If 
the  board  ordered  the  profits  made  by  any 
individual  whether  within  or  without  the 
association  to  be  paid  into  the  common 
fund,  it  should  be  done.  All  tools  and 
implements  were  to  be  looked  on  as  the 
property  of  the  community.  All  were  to 
consider  themselves  as  possessing  only  the 
use  of  the  land  and  not  proprietors  or  farm- 
ers in  the  old  sense.  Every  Friday  dockets 
or  coupons  were  to  be  distributed  to  each 
family  entitling  the  bearer  to  supplies  of  all 
kinds   at  the  stores.      Finally,  the    legal 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  61 

dissolution  of  the  association  could  be  de- 
clared by  the  "general  assembly"  of  all 
the  members  —  but  not  before  the  State  was 
safe-guarded  in  all  its  outlay  and  all  debts 
paid. 

Such  were  the  Village  Settlements  in 
ISTew  Zealand  and  other  Antipodean  re- 
gions —  praiseworthy  effort  no  doubt  to 
advance  the  well-being  of  the  people.  It 
is  sad  to  relate  they  have  all  been  dismal 
failures,  and  the  reason  is  not  far  to  seek. 

It  would  be  very  blamable  to  make  it  a 
reproach 'to  the  promoters  who  now  wield 
the  political  power,  that  they  once  were 
peddlers,  publicans  or  petty  clerks.  But 
it  is  a  reproach  to  these  men,  that  they 
gave  the  bad  example  to  the  people  they 
professed  to  serve,  of  discarding  all  religion 
from  their  own  lives  and  excluding  all  con- 
sideration of  its  restraining  influences  over 
men,  from  their  management  of  public 
affairs.  A  late  workingman  Prime  Minis- 
ter in  New  Zealand,  was  once  notorious  as  a 
lecturer  on  the  atheistic  platform  and  when 
he  came  to  die  —  cut  off  in  his  prime —  the 
whole  country  knew  that  to  the  end  he  was 
true  to  his  principles  and  false  to  his  God. 
He  was  buried  with  civil  rites.  In  those 
days  when  that  two-handed  fallacy  and 
most  fallacious  of  shibboleths  —  liberty  of 
conscience  —  is  bandied   about,  it  may  be 


62      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

said  that  no  one  should  find  fault  with  a 
man's  opinions  or  professions.  But  in  the 
ordinances  of  God  and  in  the  matter  of 
obedience  to  His  will  w^ho  cau  honestly  pre- 
tend there  is  liberty  of  "conscience "  or 
conduct  for  anybody?  And  if  men  assume 
that  there  is  no  God  to  be  taken  into  ac- 
count, nor  any  rules  laid  down  by  Him  for 
human  conduct,  the  logic  of  facts  quickly 
refutes  their  assumption.  The  failure  of 
agnostic  Socialist  schemes  such  as  the 
Colonial  Village  Settlements  demonstrates 
that  unless  men  feel  themselves  answerable 
to  a  higher  and  greater  power  than  their 
fellow-men,  and  amenable  to  a  Judge  whose 
reprimand  and  award  reach  far  beyond  this 
life,  they  never  will  be  capable  of  the  self- 
sacrifice,  self-restraint  and  self-denial  abso- 
lutely necessary  for  living  or  laboring  to- 
gether with  any  approach  to  peace  and 
concord. 

So  after  but  a  few  years  of  trial,  most  of 
those  Village  Settlements  have  broken  up. 
Quarrels  and  bickerings,  in  some  cases 
accompanied  by  assault  and  violence,  were 
reported  from  all  sides  until  the  govern- 
ments are  pretty  sick  of  their  experiments. 

In  South  Australia  towards  the  end  of  1895 
it  became  necessary  to  institute  a  parlia- 
mentary inquiry  into  the  state  of  those  Vil- 
lage Settlements.     Thirteen   such  associa- 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  63 

tions  had  been  there  estabhshed  but  two 
years  before.  The  evidence  given  before 
the  committee  was  deplorable  and  conclu- 
sive. The  settlers  were  found  to  have 
fallen  into  debt  all  round,  to  the  govern- 
ment, to  merchants,  to  the  banks.  The 
Board  charged  settlers  with  idleness  and 
incapacity,  the  settlers  charged  the  Board 
with  despotism.  In  some  of  the  villages 
with  not  more  than  two  hundred  or  three 
hundred  inhabitants,  distinct  parties  had 
already  been  formed,  as  inveterate  in  oppo- 
sition as  any  Tory  to  Whig  or  Radical  to 
Liberal-Unionist.  Alas !  poor  humanity. 
Another  strange  feature  appeared.  Nearly 
all  the  settlers,  before  they  entered  the 
association,  were  ardent  disciples  of  the 
lectures  under  the  "  red  flag"  and  readers 
of  the  abounding  communistic  press.  The 
Village  Settlement  was  the  beau  ideal  of 
these  theorists  —  the  practical  reality  of 
their  doctrines.  A  short  trial  brought  a 
rude  undeceiving.  One  man  was  heard  to 
declare  that  for  years  he  had  been  an  advo- 
cate of  "the  land  for  the  people"  — but 
now  he  preferred  to  believe  in  "  the  land  for 
Tom  O'Grady"  without  "the  people." 
Another  had  been  eager  to  live  where  every 
one  was  to  be  a  brother  and  sister,  but  now 
he  thought  it  more  peaceable  to  be  a  friend- 
less orphan,  and  so  on.     They  all  agreed 


64      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

that  somehow  the  thing  would  not  work, 
nor  was  it  ever  likely  to  work,  in  the  way 
laid  down  for  them. 

I  have  dwelt  on  these  somewhat  dry 
details  but  not  without  a  purpose,  because  I 
mean  to  show  presently,  how  in  contrast  to 
the  scientific  method,  these  same  conditions 
of  common  life  are  actually  being  fulfilled 
under  our  very  eyes,  if  we  would  only  use 
them  to  see,  and  have  actually  been  success- 
fully fulfilled  for  centuries,  under  the 
religious  method  and  by  force  of  the  super- 
natural motive. 


But  before  entering  upon  that,  as  it  is 
a  matter  of  present  public  interest,  I  wish 
here  to  notice  the  still  broader  and  bolder 
experiment  in  the  "  land  question  "  which 
these  same  socialist  and  agnostic  legislators 
of  the  Antipodes  have  entered  upon.  In 
1894  the  !N^ew  Zealand  ministry  began  a 
trial  of  that  Land  ISTationalization  scheme 
advocated  by  Mr.  Henry  George,  of  which 
the  world  has  heard  so  much  talk  of  late. 

They  passed  a  "  perpetual  lease  "  bill  by 
which  land  in  'New  Zealand  shall  henceforth 
be  held  by  tenant-occupiers  only,  the  State 
possessing  the  fee-simple  and  becoming  the 
grand  landlord  of  all  the  country  by  de- 
grees. 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  65 

The  "limitations  of  holdings"  was  an- 
other important  measure.  It  provided  that 
for  the  future  no  one  person  shall  acquire 
more  than  four  hundred  acres  of  purely 
agricultural  land,  or  more  than  eight  hun- 
dred acres  of  land  part  agricultural,  part 
pastoral,  or  more  than  two  thousand  acres 
of  purely  pastoral  land.  This  measure  is 
a  step,  nay,  a  stride,  towards  the  equal 
partition  of  the  land  among  the  people 
and  aimed  at  the  "squatter"  or  large 
station-owning  class.  The  last  election, 
1896,  was  looked  on  as  the  most  important 
ever  held  in  New  Zealand,  because  during 
this  term  of  office,  immense  tracts  of  Crown 
lands  will  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  govern- 
ment which  were  formerly  leased,  under 
"  squatter  "  ascendency,  at  the  merest  nom- 
inal rent  to  large  pastoralists  in  addition  to 
what  they  had  already  purchased,  at  a 
cheap  figure  also.  It  was  therefore  of 
immense  interest  to  the  large  station- 
owners,  that  they  should  have  a  voice  in 
deciding  whether  those  old  leases  should 
be  renewed  or  not,  while  it  was  perfectly 
well  known  that  if  the  promoters  of  the 
new  land  laws  —  the  party  then  in  power  — 
got  in  again,  those  leases  would  most  cer- 
tainly not  be  renewed.  It  may  be  imagined 
how  eagerly  both  sides  prepared  for 
the  fight.     It  was  the  last  great  effort  of 


66      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

the  Conservative  party,  which  for  some 
time  has  been  in  a  hopeless  minority. 
Like  the  Tories  in  England  Who  fell  back 
on  the  rump  of  the  dissident  Liberals 
"and  became  Liberal-Unionists  in  order  to  re- 
main in  power,  the  Conservatives  were  ready 
to  ally  themselves  with  any  old  party  that 
would  give  them  a  chance  of  a  majority. 
They  adopted  the  platform  of  the  hquor  Pro- 
hibitionists —  with  somewhat  wry  faces  it 
may  be  supposed.  They  also  gained  some 
strength  from  those,  and  they  were  many, 
whose  confidence  was  shaken  by  some  recent 
financial  blundering  of  the  popular  party's 
ministry.  But  to  no  avail.  They  were 
defeated  at  the  polls,  and  those  important 
expiring  leases  are  at  the  discretion  of  the 
land  nationalizers. 

But  it  was  not  alone  for  renewed  leases 
the  large  land-holders  were  fighting,  it  was 
for  their  very  existence,  for  there  was  yet 
another  land  measure  passed  by  the  Popular 
party  which  affected  them  most  seriously. 
It  was  the  "progressive  land  tax"  bill, 
which  provides  that  taxes  shall  go  on  in- 
creasing in  heavier  and  heavier  ratio  on 
every  thousand  acres  of  pastoral  land  above 
the  prescribed  number  of  acres.  It  is 
another  way  of  expropriating  the  big  land- 
owners. Coming,  together  with  the  large 
outlay  necessitated  by  the  rabbit-pest,  it 


AGNOSTIC   SOCIALISM.  67 

has  made  large  station  owning  a  losing  and 
ruinous  occupation.  Some  proprietors  have 
already  sold  out  to  the  government,  the 
only  available  customer,  and  all  would  be 
willing  to  do  so  and  leave  the  country  if 
they  could.  Thus  the  workingman's  gov- 
ernment will  be  ultimately  free  to  parcel  out 
the  land  among  the  workingmen.  The 
outcome  of  this  very  courageous  legislation 
cannot  of  course  b6  fully  foreseen,  for  it  is 
only  the  next  generation  will  be  witness  of 
final  results.  But  one  experiment  already 
made  by  the  government,  with  an  estate 
purchased  from  dissatisfied  owners,  does 
not  augur  fair  things  for  their  farther  ven- 
tures in  the  future.  It  is  now  widely 
rumored  that  the  government  has  not  found 
the  State  farmers  of  this  Cheviot  Estate 
any  less  troublesome,  more  honest  or  hap- 
pier than  the  village  settlers.  The  truth 
is,  those  new  legislative  reformers  of 
humanity  are  attempting  the  impossible 
task  of  promoting  the  contentment  and 
happiness  of  men,  without  improving  that 
human  nature  from  which  all  their  miseries 
spring.  The  genius  of  the  "  scientific 
method,"  which  entirely  ignores  the  cultiva- 
tion and  correction  of  that  human  nature, 
is  deluding  these  obstinate  but  well-mean- 
ing politicians  of  agnostic  socialism.  A 
whole  generation  has  now  issued  from  the 


QS      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

free  and  secular  schools  founded  also  by 
them.  And  what  result  can  be  looked  for 
from  pupils,  who  never  once,  within  their 
walls,  had  heard  inculcated  the  only  effec- 
tive principle  of  moral  restraint  and  self- 
control,  nor  ever  heard  mentioned  the  name 
or  existence  of  the  supreme  Arbiter  of  hu- 
man conduct?  In  some  schools  indeed 
such  things  have  been  mentioned  —  only 
however  to  be  sneered  at  by  the  atheist 
teachers,  of  whom  there  are  a  very  large 
number  in  these  State  schools.  The  evi- 
dences accumulating  from  every  side  of 
perverse  and  vicious  conduct,  demonstrate 
the  utter  inability  of  those  purely  secular 
experiments  in  Socialism  to  meet  the 
aspirations  of  humanity  for  a  more  tolerable 
mundane  existence.  'No  wonder  people  are 
beginning  to  clamor  for  some  more  suc- 
cessful solution. 

It  will  be  well  worth  while  then,  in  the 
next  chapter,  to  show  that  this  very  social- 
ism and  communism  so  much  advocated  in 
these  latter  days,  and  so  often  abortively 
attempted  by  some  men,  are  not  only  not 
impossible  and  unattainable,  but  have  for 
centuries  been  realized  and  actually  exist, 
with  the  happiest  results  in  the  world  of 
to-day. 


INSTANCES   OF   REAL   SOCIALISM.  69 

CHArTER      V. 

Instances  ol  Real  Socialism. 

There  is  in  the  world  at  this  present 
moment  a  body  of  men,  numbering  roughly 
some  twelve  thousand  associates.  They 
are  drawn,  in  most  part,  from  the  poorer 
classes.  They  are  strangers  to  each  other 
in  the  sense  that  they  come  not  from  the 
same  place  or  even  from  the  same  country — 
they  are  of  many  nations.  There  is  no  dis- 
tinction of  rank  or  class  among  them,  save 
what  good  order  requires.  The  places  of 
authority  are  filled  by  election  and,  in  the 
minor  trusts,  by  appointment.  All, 
whether  in  authority  or  not,  are  equal  be- 
fore the  general  regulations  or  rule  of  life. 
They  possess  property,  places  of  abode  and 
means  of  subsistence,  but  everything  is  m 
common.  ISTo  individual  possesses  anything 
in  his  own  right,  yet  all  have  the  use  of 
what  is  owned.  They  may  inherit  from 
relatives  and  others  as  individuals,  but 
such  inheritance  may  be  used  only  for 
some  good  purpose  and  by  permission. 
They  can,  however,  will  it  back  to 
whom  they  please  outside  their  own  body. 
They  work,  not  as  they  please,  but  only  as 
work  is  assigned  them.     The  main  employ- 


70      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

ment  is  of  one  kind,  they  teach,  mostly  the 
poor.  They  teach  too  those  who  can  pay, 
to  be  able  to  teach  more  of  the  poor  who 
can  not.  They  also  instruct  the  ignorant 
of  the  adult  working*  classes.  After  that, 
they  do  all  their  own  domestic  work.  Be- 
yond the  marketing  and  cooking  and  clean- 
ing up,  that  is  very  little,  each  one  in  his 
private  life  being  his  own  servant.  They 
are  ready,  however,  at  all  times,  for  any 
deed  of  neighborly  benevolence  that  may 
lie  at  their  hands  to  do.  They  have  joined 
the  ambulances  in  time  of  war.  They  have 
their  own  times  for  relaxation  and  moderate 
enjoyment,  but  the  pleasures  which  the 
world  pursues,  with  so  much  zest  and  cost, 
concern  them  not.  They  are  never  permit- 
ted to  be  unoccupied.  Their  day  is  of 
seventeen  hours  and  minutely  regulated. 
Their  night  is  of  seven  hours  from  9  p.  m. 
to  4  A.  M.  or  10  p.  M.  to  5  A.  M.  in  some 
climates.  They  are  not  lovers  of  the  soft 
life.  They  live  together  in  groups  and  call 
each  other  "brothers."  They  are  inter- 
changeable from  group  to  group,  and 
though  they  are  scattered  widely  through 
the  world,  all  follow  one  and  the  same  rule 
and  obey  one  voice.  At  stated  times  they 
hold  general  assemblies,  each  house  elect- 
ing a  representative  delegate.  They  have 
thus  existed  for  over  two   hundred  years. 


INSTANCES   OP  REAL   SOCIALISM.  71 

They  join  young,  live  long,  and  die  in  the 
ranks.  They  renew  the  dead  by  ever  in- 
creasing volunteers.  In  sickness  and  old 
age  they  receive  a  constant  and  tender  care. 
They  must  needs  like  this  life,  and  must 
deem  it  happiest  and  best  for  them,  to  abide 
in  it  so  long.  This  is  a  living  and  wonder- 
ful fact  for  all  men  to  see. 


Again,  there  is  a  body  of  women  in  the 
world  to-day,  numbering  some  fourteen 
thousand.  They  differ  from  the  men,  just 
alluded  to,  in  that  they  are  drawn  from  all 
classes  of  society,  from  families  of  wealth 
and  title,  down  to  the  daughters  of  the  poor. 
They  differ  too,  in  that  their  works  have  a 
range  as  wide  as  human  wants.  They  tend 
leper  hospitals,  or  smallpox  patients,  or  yel- 
low fever  cases.  They  teach  fashionable 
academies  or  instruct  little  dusky  natives  un- 
der tropical  skies.  They  go  under  fire  on 
the  battle-field  to  aid  the  wounded,  or  into 
the  slums  of  towns  to  dress  the  sores  of  the 
uncleanly  sick,  and  charm  away,  by  sooth- 
ing words,  the  sullen  despair  of  the  suffer- 
ing poor.  They  give  lessons  in  painting, 
lectures  on  physical  science,  or  preside  at 
an  organ.  They  cook  like  professional 
cJiefSj  wash  the  pans  and  kettles,  launder 


72      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

and  scrub  the  house.  They  trahi  the  work- 
man's child  to  laceraaking  and  embroidery, 
short-hand,  and  typewriting,  or  take  charge 
of  a  lunatic  asylum  or  a  female  prison. 
They  have  open  homes  for  the  friendless 
young  of  their  sex,  and  shelters,  with  a 
sister's  welcome,  for  the  fallen  and  unfor- 
tunate, —  fourteen  thousand  of  them,  busy 
ever,  at  all  these  works  all  over  the  world  ! 
And  all  that  work  they  do  for  nothing. 
There  is  no  personal  gain  —  they  get  no 
money  for  it,  individually.  There  is  no 
rank  or  division  of  class  among  them.  The 
countess  and  the  peasant  work  side  by  side. 
They  wear  the  same  costume  —  the  same 
plain  and  rather  coarse  garb.  You  can 
scarce  tell  who  is  who,  for  all  are  trained 
to  gentle  manners,  and  when  they  want  to 
spend  a  few  pennies  they  often  laugh  to- 
gether to  find  they  have  not  got  them. 
Though  they  have  gone  apart  from  their 
own  kin  to  live  with  strangers,  they  have 
homes  in  common  wherever  they  go  and 
they  call  each  other  "  sister,"  which  they 
truly  are  to  each  other  in  will  and  deed. 
They  rise  at  4  o'clock  at  all  seasons  and  in 
every  climate,  and  there  is  scarcely  a  cli- 
mate where  they  are  not  found,  and  they 
retire  at  9  p.  m.  Throug^h  their  long  day, 
they  agree  to  be  busy,  always  busy.  They 
agree  to   be   cheerful  too,  to  help  others 


INSTANCES   OF   REAL  SOCIALISM.  73 

through  sorrow.  Their  government,  or 
plan  of  management,  is  very  simple  but 
very  perfect.  They  are  all  subject  to  one 
head,  and  that  is  a  man.  He  is  called  the 
director.  But  he  is  not  absolute  or  despotic. 
There  are  others  to  v^hom  he  is  responsible, 
and  he  guides  only  by  long-established  rule. 
There  is  ample  and  full  protection  for  the 
weakest  and  youngest  among  them.  Brave 
and  wonderful  little  army !  Death  claims 
them  as  other  mortals,  but  their  ranks  never 
seem  to  thin.  Human  hearts  beat  beneath 
their  blue  serge  robe  —  women's  hearts, 
with  all  a  woman's  tenderness  and  yearn- 
ings—  but  disciplined.  They,  too,  have 
their  general  assemblies  now  and  again, 
and  then  it  is  wonderful  to  hear  them  tell 
the  blended  story  of  their  world-wide 
experience;  for  the  great  human  drama 
has  been  unfolded  before  them  in  the 
by-ways  of  life  —  the  fierce  passions  at 
play,  the  hopes,  the  fears,  the  griefs, 
and  joys  of  the  human  struggle  —  they 
have  witnessed  it  all,  and  borne  part  in 
the  action. 

Among  themselves  they  are  republican 
simplicity  and  equality,  and  if  one  is  given 
charge,  as  must  needs  be,  she  is  obliged  to 
call  herself  the  servant,  to  obviate  distress- 
ing airs,  and  keep  her  humble.  For  women 
are  prone,  perhaps   more  so   than  men,  to 


74      THE  REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

men's  great  weakness,  which  Shakespeare 
so  finely  censures  — 

"  Man,  proud  man, 
Clothed  in  a  little  brief  authority, 
Doth  play  such  tricks  before  high  heaven 
As  make  the  a     els  weep," 

or  laugh  perhaps  would  be  better.  They 
are  guarded  against  that,  and  are  not  per- 
mitted to  distress  each  other,  or  either 
amuse  or  grieve  the  angels.  They  choose 
never  to  call  anything  their  own  —  they  say 
our  shoes,  and  if  things  get  mixed  in  the 
washing  they  do  not  mind,  provided  they 
fit  when  they  put  them  on.  They  sit  at  the 
same  table  and  eat  the  same  food,  what  one 
has,  all  have.  What  could  be  more  perfect 
communism  than  this?  Have  you  ever 
heard  of  socialism  more  complete?  Nor  is 
this  a  state  of  things  they  are  merely  ex- 
perimenting on.  Their  association  came 
into  existence  about  the  time  that  London 
was  burning  and  was  made  desolate  by  its 
great  plague.  And  for  these  two  centuries 
and  more,  without  dispute  or  quarrel,  this 
same  life  has  been  lived  by  multitudes  of 
those  weak  and  gentlewomen.  They  must 
have  found  it  good  to  live  so.  The  stage 
of  experiment  is  over  long  ago,  and  at  this 
hour,  there  are  some  fourteen  thousand  who 


INSTANCES   or  REAL   SOCIALISM.  75 

live  so  still,   and    make  no  noise  about  it 
either. 


There  is  yet  another  body  existing  in  our 
time,  who  have  gone  apart  from  their  kind- 
red, to  live  a  similar  life  in  their  own  fashion. 
It  is  again,  a  body  of  men.  I  have  lately  seen 
it  stated,  that,  at  the  present  moment,  they 
number  about  fifteen  thousand .  They  differ 
from  the  former  bodies,  in  that  they  are 
drawn  from  the  aristocracy  of  talent.  Ex- 
cept a  minority  of  lay-associates,  who  do  the 
lower  order  of  work,  but  who  yet  enjoy  to  the 
full,  equality  of  membership,  and  share  in 
the  common  life ;  all  the  rest  are  gentle- 
men highly  educated  and  accomplished. 
This  element  is  admittedly  the  hardest  to 
deal  with  in  the  matter  of  socialism,  for 
"knowledge  puffeth  up,"  as  a  wise  writer 
said  long  ago  —  and  nothing  puffs  up  like 
it.  Yet  three  hundred  and  forty  years 
have  gone  by,  since  they  first  came  to- 
gether, and  without  any  friction  from 
within,  they  have  succeeded  in  merging  self 
in  the  common  number,  and  have  lived  in 
true  fraternity,  equality  and  that  liberty 
they  like  best.  No  matter  how  much  the 
general  body  gains  in  wealth,  or  acquires  in 
property,  it  does  not  make  any  individual 
among  them  one  doit  or  dime  the  richer. 


76      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENpE. 

No  member  wants  or  cares  to  own  any- 
thing, not  even  the  coat  or  hat  he  may  be 
wearing,  and  were  he  asked  to  take  them 
off,  and  let  another  have  them,  he  would 
do  so  and  receive  others  though  inferior. 
There  are  no  parties  among  them,  nor  any 
private  enterprise  or  interest  to  be  pursued. 
All  yield  themselves  voluntarily  to  the 
strictest  discipline,  and  each  receives  his 
orders  what  to  do  or  where  to  go,  even  to 
the  most  distant  place,  without  a  murmur. 
They  have  common  homes  and  a  common 
table,  and  like  the  others  only  seven  hours' 
rest.  Their  employments  are  very  varied, 
but  their  main  work  is  secondary  and  higher 
grade  teaching  —  next  to  having  knowl- 
edge, is  the  pleasure  of  imparting  it,  and 
the  years  are  long  that  they  devote  to  its 
acquisition.  However  there  is  this  pecu- 
liarity in  their  institute.  After  the  general 
and  thorough  training,  to  which  all  are 
submitted,  has  been  completed,  then  great 
latitude  is  allowed  to  individual  bents  and 
tastes.  One  man  has  a  taste  for  oratory  — 
well,  an  orator  let  him  be,  and  give  him  all 
the  time,  that  the  drudgery  and  toil  of 
oratory  require. 

Another  man  likes  astronomy  —  they 
build  him  an  observatory,  and  stock  it  with 
instruments.  They  have  three  very  fa- 
mous observatories  at  present,  at   Eome, 


INSTANCES    OF   REAL    SOCIALISM.  77 

Manila,  and  Havana.  They  will  let  their 
man  go  in  charge  of  government  as- 
tronomical expeditions.  One  died  at  the 
Cape  in  such  employment  not  long  ago. 

Another  man  has  a  talent  for  writing  — 
let  him  write  by  all  means,  and  have  every 
facility  for  publication.  Or  they  found  a 
monthly  magazine  and  let  him  edit  it. 

Another  loves  teaching  —  they  find  him 
''  a  chair"  and  make  him  a  life-long  pro- 
fessor. 

Another  thinks  he  can  manage  the 
strange  peoples  of  distant  countries  —  they 
send  him  to  China,  Korea,  and  Japan. 

Another  has  a  tact  for  civilizing  savages  ; 
they  plant  him  among  the  very  worst  spec- 
imens to  be  found,  in  Northwest  Australia 
and  Borneo. 

Another  has  the  social  gift,  and  will  carry 
weight  in  society ;  they  give  him  a  good 
coat  and  let  him  dine  out. 

Another  has  a  turn  for  the  physical  sci- 
ences— they  build  him  a  laboratory,  supply 
him  with  chemicals  and  a  microscope,  and 
let  him  correspond  with  ''learned  societies." 

Thus  the  widest  room  is  given  to  individ- 
uality, yet  from  one  governing  hand  go  out 
the  threads  of  the  wide  network,  that  holds 
all  in  the  unity  of  the  common  life. 
Whenever  and  from  wheresoever  they  are 
called  back,  they  come.     Wherever  sent. 


78      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

they  go.  In  declining  years  or  strength 
they  have  a  welcome  home  and  a  brother's 
care.  When  they  die  they  make  no  will, 
they  have  nothing  to  leave,  even  their  old 
clothes  are  not  theirs.  Did  Marx  or  Blanc 
or  Fourier  or  Bellamy  or  George  or  Wm. 
Morris  ever  formulate  a  more  complete 
socialism  or  communism  than  that?  The 
schemes  that  these  men  have  sketched  for 
us,  remain  mostly  on  paper.  When  tried, 
they  break  down.  But  this  body  is  a  living 
reality,  an  achievement,  a  success !  Why 
is  this?  The  answer  is  very  simple.  Those 
writers  confine  their  view  solely  to  this  life, 
but  the  men  and  women  I  have  described, 
work  both  for  this  life  and  the  next,  or 
rather  work  through  this  life,  with  a  view 
to  that  they  believe  eternal. 

The  self-restraint,  and  the  curbing  of  all 
self-seeking,  necessary  that  men  should 
live  together  in  peace  while  pursuing  a 
common  end,  find  no  motive  strong  enough 
to  sustain  them,  in  the  mere  temporal  advan- 
tage of  a  little  more  security,  or  temporal 
happiness  to  be  attained.  This  is  a  matter 
of  fact.  It  has  been  proved  by  the  failure 
of  the  trials  essayed  over  and  over  again. 

The  socialist  Village  Settlements  in  the 
Australian  Colonies,  just  described,  are  a 
notorious  and  very  recent  example.  It  is 
well  known,  that  in  other  places  groups  of 


INSTANCES   OF  REAL   SOCIALISM.  79 

people,  wearied  by  the  aimless  frivolity  of 
what  is  called  society,  and  pained  by  the 
seemingly  unjust  inequalities  of  life,  now 
and  again,  have  gone  apart  to  try  the 
experiment  of  the  common  life  on  purely 
secular  lines.  The  New  England  Brook 
Farm  community  (disciples  of  Fourierism 
and  Margaret  Fuller)  were  the  wonder  and 
the  talk  of  the  world  for  a  brief  season, 
and  ended  in  the  pitying  smiles  of  many. 
The  biography  of  the  late  Lawrence  Oli- 
phant  supplies  another  and  very  interesting 
instance,  though  the  story  is  sad  enough. 
Readers  of  his  works  can  not  fail  to  recog- 
nize his  brilliant  gifts  of  mind,  and  to 
admire  the  grace  and  fluency  of  a  style, 
that  entitles  him  to  a  high  place  among 
the  writers  of  our  century.  Readers  of 
his  biography  will  wonder,  that  a  man  like 
him,  born  to  good  social  position,  attain- 
ing by  his  talents  high  rank  in  the  dip- 
lomatic service  of  his  country,  eagerly  bad 
for,  and  largely  paid  as  a  journahst,  should 
have  abandoned  a  career  of  such  brilliant 
promise,  and  in  unrest  of  soul,  have  sought 
the  happier  way  of  a  higher  and  unworldly 
life.  But  to  relinquish  wealth  and  high 
position  to  brave  public  opinion,  to  bear 
the  pitying  comments  of  friends,  above  all 
to  lead  his  young  and  accomplished  life- 
partner  into  his  venture,  displays  at  least 


80      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

the  courage  of  sincerity.  It  all  reads  like 
some  far-off,  old  religious  romance, 
rather  than  a  true  story  of  real  life  from 
our  worldliest  of  centuries. 

But  the  strangest  and  saddest  part  of 
it  is  the  singular  choice  he  made  of  a  guide 
to  that  hard  and  mystic  way.  This  was 
a  certain  American,  an  ardent  preacher  of 
the  higher  life,  and  the  better  way.  It 
is  almost  unaccountable,  how  a  man  of 
Oliphant's  intelligence  and  worldly  experi- 
ence, should  have  fallen  so  easily  under  the 
influence  of  that  person,  who,  as  the  sequel 
showed,  was  more  of  an  adventurer,  if  not 
a  mountebank,  than  a  spiritual  enthusiast. 
Yet  so  it  was,  even  to  the  extent  of  utter 
self-abandonment.  He  and  his  young 
wife  accompanied  him  to  America,  and 
having  made  over  to  him  all  their  money, 
and  even  their  personal  effects,  were  put 
to  work  by  him  on  his  communistic  farm. 
His  despotism  over  them  went  the  length, 
not  only  of  imposing  the  rudest  and  most 
drudging  toil  upon  those  refined  people, 
but  of  separating  them,  and  forbidding 
them  even  to  speak  to  each  other.  But 
their  fortitude  soon  gave  way,  and  they 
came  out  of  this  painful  and  humiliating 
experience,  shattered  in  health  and  fortune, 
and  survived  it  only  a  very  few  years. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  thousands  of  peo- 


INSTANCES  OF  REAL   SOCIALISM.  81 

pie,  banded  together  under  similar  condi- 
tions, in  the  three  associations  I  have  de- 
scribed, succeed  and  persevere  unto  the  end, 
happy  in  their  undertaking. 

That  description  is  no  fancy  sketch. 

These  associations  are  living  facts  visible 
before  the  world  and  have  names.  The 
first  is  an  Order  of  French  origin  known 
as  the  Brothers  of  the  Christian  Schools, 
commonly  called  in  English  "  The  Christian 
Brothers."  The  second,  also  of  French 
foundation,  is  the  congregation  of  the 
"Filles  de  la  Charite"  — the  famous  Sis- 
ters of  Charity  —  those  with  the  great, 
white,  wing-like  bonnets  supposed  to  be 
adapted  from  the  Picardy  or  IsTorman  peas- 
ant head-dress  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
And  the  third  is  the  celebrated  Order  whose 
members  write  the  formidable  S.  J.  after 
their  names  —  Societas  Jesu  —  Jesuits. 

One  of  the  moral  wonders  of  the  world 
is  the  ISToviciate  of  the  Sisters  of  Charity  in 
the  Rue  du  Bac,  in  Paris  ;  touching  on  the 
wicked  Latin  quarter,  the  seminaire^  as 
they  call  it,  seminarium,  in  spiritual  botany, 
the  nursery,  where  the  seeds  of  piety  in 
every  variety  are  planted  under  cover,  and 
its  tender  shoots  sprout  in  warm  shelter 
from  passion's  storms.  If  you  are  respect- 
able, and  get  yourself  authenticated  you 
can  have  a  peep.     Under  an  old  portico  in 


82      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

that  rather  dingy  street,  you  enter  one  of 
the  largest  private  properties  in  the  heart 
of  that  great  city.  When  I  saw  the  Novi- 
ces, it  was  on  a  procession  day.  They 
numbered,  then,  between  five  and  six  hun- 
dred. It  was  a  wonderful  sight.  The 
bloom  of  youth  was  on  them  all —  and 
beauty's  bloom  on  many  —  the  usual  slen- 
der proportion  of  it,  as  in  any  crowd  of  the 
sex.  They  were  dressed  all  alike  —  half 
cap,  half  old-fashioned  bonnet  —  a  fichu 
and  plain  black  gown  —  like  decent,  clean- 
ly, French  country  girls.  They  were  of 
many  nationalities  —  of  all  ranks.  The 
neighboring,  aristocratic  Faubourg  St. 
Germain,  was  even  represented.  It  was 
delightful  to  hear  that  immense  chorus  of 
young  voices  in  the  hymns.  What  a  holo- 
caust to  heaven  in  those  young  lives. 
They  were  here  preparing, in  innocence  and 
purity  of  life,  for  the  great  renouncement. 
Out  from  that  training  cot,  would  go  those 
carrier-doves  of  the  Divine  Compassion,  to 
minister  to  all  humanity's  miseries.  For 
two  hundred  years  they  have  been  going, 
into  every  clime,  across  many  seas.  They 
are  going  still,  if  indeed,  they  have  not 
been  evicted  by  those  noble  persecutors  of 
all  that  is  good,  messieurs  the  municipal 
councillors  of  Paris. 

A  little  farther  down  on  the  same  ' '  Rive 


INSTANCES   OF  REAL   SOCIALISM.  83 

Gauche,"  near  the  ''  Invalides,"  you  may 
see  a  similar,  if  not  quite  as  picturesque  a 
sight  in  the  Noviciate  of  the  Freres  des 
Ecoles.  It  is  certain  they  have  been  dis- 
turbed, drafted  into  the  common  barrack- 
room  to  serve  their  military  term,  by  the 
votes  of  those  "  emancipators  of  the 
race  "  —  the  Republican  deputies  of  modern 
France.  There  were  not  enough  soldiers, 
without  disturbing  those  devoted  instructors 
of  the  poor!  Will  any  one  solve  the 
mystery  —  why  so  many  men  and  women 
are  found  to  hate,  storm,  and  rage  against 
everything  that  is  really  pure  and  good? 
If  any  one  doubts  there  is  a  devil,  let  him 
ponder  that  fact.  Left  and  right  of  that 
river  Seine,  there  is  heaped  up  as  much 
human  defiance  of  God,  and  depravity,  as 
could  well  cumber  any  given,  equal  space 
of  this  earth's  surface.  Wedged  in  be- 
tween —  "  les  extremes  se  touchant ' '  —  you 
have  those  parterres  of  virtue's  finest 
flower,  to  stay  the  suspended  sword  of  the 
Divine  Avenger. 

The  N'oviciates  of  the  Great  Society,  S. 
J.  are  everywhere.  There  is  one  for  each 
of  its  twenty  or  so  of  Promnces. 

But  these  three  orders,  by  no  means  ex- 
haust the  list  of  those  who  seek  their  hap- 
piness and  welfare  in  the  common  life,  even 
at  the  present   day.     I  selected   them  as 


84      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

types.  They  are  not  even  as  old,  as  some 
others  which  still  exist.  One  has  been 
thirteen  centuries  in  existence.  Millions  of 
men  have  passed  through  its  ranks  in  that 
time,  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  women 
through  those  of  the  female  branch,  dwell- 
ing in  perfect  communism  and  purest 
socialism.  This  is  the  famous  Order  of  the 
Benedictines.  The  Cistercians  and  Car- 
thusians date  from  a  thousand  years  back. 
The  Friars  Minor,  the  Friars  Preachers 
and  women's  Orders  of  Carmelites,  Fran- 
ciscans and  Poor  Clares,  six  hundred  or 
seven  hundred  years. 

Far  from  decreasing  since  the  times  of  the 
so-called  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, these  associations  of  pious  commun- 
ism have  had  so  prolific  a  growth  that  the 
Council  of  the  Vatican  had  it  on  its  pro- 
gramme to  devise  a  scheme  for  their 
limitation,  and  the  amalgamation  at  least  of 
those  whose  foundation  was  only  of  com- 
paratively recent  date. 

And  they  all  succeed !  It  is  surely  worth 
the  while  of  our  agnostic  socialists  to 
inquire  into  the  secret  of  that  success. 
If  they  are  sincere,  it  ought  to  be  of  the 
highest  interest  to  them  to  know,  that  a 
socialism  and  a  communism  in  the  best 
meaning  of  those  words,  well  regulated 
and  successfully   conducted,  do   exist  and 


INSTANCES    OF   REAL    SOCIALISM.  85 

are  actually  practiced  at  this  very  hour, 
and  have  existed  so  for  centuries.  This 
they  may  see  if  they  but  use  their  eyes, 
and  may  moreover  learn  the  secret  of  this 
amazing  fact.  For  the  men  and  women 
who  have  gone  apart,  to  tread  the  peace- 
ful happy  way  of  self-renouncement,  have 
enrolled  themselves  in  no  secret  societies. 
The  conditions  of  their  lives  are  perfectly 
well  known.  Their  friends  and  relatives, 
from  whom  they  are  by  no  means  severed 
either  in  converse  or  affection,  know  per- 
fectly how  they  live,  why  they  so  live  and 
are  quite  at  ease  as  to  their  conduct  and 
welfare  and  —  their  sanity.  There  is  a 
certain  class  of  people  who  do  not  weigh 
this  latter  fact  sufficiently,  when  they 
officiously  display  their  fears  and  anxiety 
about  conventual  life.  It  should  make 
them  feel,  that  they  are  meddling  in  a 
business  which  is  the  immediate  concern 
of  those  friends  and  relatives  to  attend  to, 
and  who  do  attend  to  it  and  are  perfectly 
satisfied,  that  it  is  all  well  with  those  who 
are  near  and  dear  to  them.  This  fact  is, 
also,  a  crushing  refutation  of  the  many 
coarse  and  gratuitous  assertions  on  this 
subject,  that  rest  as  a  blur  and  a  blot  on 
many  a  page  of  English  literature  for  the 
last  three  hundred  years. 

Our  agnostic  theorists,  and  unsuccessful 


86      THE   REACTION   FKOM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

experimentalists  in  the  common  life,  will 
find  that  those  other  men  and  women  have 
lived  it,  and  died  in  it,  because  above  and 
beyond  this  theatre  of  human  passions, 
weaknesses  and  contentions,  they  lifted 
eyes  of  faith  and  held  in  view,  as  their  goal, 
the  life  that  ends  not  and  knows  no  strife.  ^ 

And  they  may  rest  assured,  if  they  will 
only  read  the  lesson  of  facts,  that  all  other 
communism  and  socialism  not  founded  in  a 
faith  like  that,  are  simply  impossible.  There 
is  no  proof  so  convincing  as  experience. 
And  if  there  is  one  experience  more  invaria- 
ble in  this  world  than  another,  it  is  that 
motives  of  faith  have  here  succeeded,  where 
bare  human  efforts  have  always  failed. 

In  traveling  the  highways  of  the  world, 
I  have  been  surprised  to  find  how  many  of 
our  brethren,  separated  in  the  various  sects, 
are  strangely  uninformed  and  misinformed 
about  the  great  religious  Orders  actually 
existing  in  the  Catholic  Church.  When- 
ever I  attempted  to  describe  them,  they 
listened  with  either  an  air  of  incredulity  or 
as  if  the  tale  were  of  some  long-past  ro- 
mance. As  for  the  many  people  who 
"believe  nothing,*'  I  might  as  well  have 
talked  to  them  of  the  planetary  beings  of 
Mars  or  Ifeptune,  so  little  did  they  suspect, 
that  there  were  fellow-men  around  them 
leading  such  wondrous  lives. 


OTHER  QUESTIONS  NOT  ANSWERED  BY  SCIENCE.     87 

For  such  as  these  this  chapter  will  not  be 
amiss.  "  But  surely  you  do  not  expect  all 
the  world  to  become  Jesuits  and  nuns  to 
improve  their  social  condition?"  By  no 
means,  but  what  I  do  assert  is,  that  every 
experiment  in  socialism  that  is  not  founded, 
in  a  modified  degree,  of  course,  on  the 
supernatural  motives  which  inspire  these 
great  Orders,  is  sure  to  end  in  disruption 
and  confusion.  Without  rehgion  it  could 
not  endure. 


Chapter    YI. 
Other  Questions  Hot  Answered  by  Science. 

If  the  scientists,  who  ignore  revelation, 
have  presented  us  with  only  a  very  unin- 
viting and  somewhat  slimy  account  of  our 
origin,  and  are  entirely  mute  before  the 
question  of  what  is  to  become  of  us,  let  us 
see,  if  they  can  satisfy  or  reconcile  us  to  the 
state  of  things  we  have  to  endure  in  our 
intermediate  passage  between  our  cradle  and 
our  grave.  The  human  life,  transitory 
gift  of  each  one  of  us,  brief  and  sure  to 
end,  that  is  the  problem  of  the  highest 
interest  to  men. 

Few  there  are  who  fail  to  feel  how  trying 


88      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

and  puzzling  are  its  varying  moods  and 
varied  fortunes.  "  Moving  accidents," 
there  are,  "by  flood  and  field"  —  perils, 
seeming  injustices,  fearful  cruelties,  unfair 
inequalities,  pain,  sorrow,  suffering,  race 
antagonisms,  human  slaughter  by  human 
hands,  until  the  earth  is  soaked  in  blood, 
and  human  history  grows  red  as  we  read. 
Men  want  to  know  —  Why  should  these 
things  be? 

In  another  aspect,  this  planet  of  ours 
looks  like  a  huge  penal  settlement  adrift 
upon  the  sky.  While  all  men  are  born  to 
work  of  some  kind,  nine-tenths  of  them  are 
condemned  to  hard  labor  for  life.  The  lot 
of  the  majority  is  a  rough  one,  and  their 
condition  is  prolonged  poverty,  while 
everywhere  absolute  pauperism  is  more  or 
less  to  be  found.  Suffering  and  sorrow 
with  impartial  hand  knock  at  every  door. 
There  is  no  house,  be  it  every  so  grand,  or 
ever  so  wretched,  that  has  not,  or  has  not 
had,  its  secret  sorrow  and  its  chamber  of 
sickness,  pain  and  death. 

Why  has  it  been  so  ordered  and  who  has 
ordered  it  so?     Surely  it  was  not  man. 

Each  one's  gift  of  life  is  a  troublesome 
thing.  It  demands  constant  thought  and 
care.  Any  relenting  or  neglect  means 
starvation,  dirt,  suffering  and  disease. 
Each  minute  part  of  the  bodily  organization 


OTHER  QUESTIONS  NOT  ANSWERED  BY  SCIENCE.     89 

must  be  administered  to,  and  some  of  its 
functions  are  most  humiliating.  What  is 
it  in  our  nature,  that  makes  some  things 
painfully  and  shamefully  repugnant  to  us, 
with  no  choice  but  submission  to  them? 
Life  is  threatened  with  fearful  dangers. 
Think  of  the  storms  that  rage,  the  hurri- 
canes, tornadoes,  the  choking,  blinding 
blizzards  of  winter,  the  sun-stroke  of  the 
summer-time,  earthquakes,  tidal  waves 
(thirty-five  thousand  people  destroyed  in 
Japan  the  other  day),  of  the  annihilating 
lightning.  "When  "  the  sea  gives  up  its 
dead"  that  went  down  in  doomed  ships, 
what  a  host  it  will  be  !  When  the  graves 
of  earth  shall  yawn,  how  many  shriveled 
corpses  will  bear  the  scars  of  violent  ends  ! 
Think  of  the  fierce  beasts  and  poison- 
bearing  reptiles,  that  lurk  upon  the  earth 
where  the  sun  shines  hottest  —  the  prowling 
tiger,  that  carries  off  between  his  powerful 
jaws  living,  agonizing  Indian  villagers  to 
devour  them  at  leisure  in  his  lair,  and  the 
other  "  tiger  of  the  sea  "  that  bites  through 
bones  and  flesh  at  a  single  snap  —  the  deaf 
adder  of  the  sugar  plantations,  whose  swift 
sting  paralyzes  from  head  to  foot  with 
electric  speed  —  the  sword  fish  that  pierces 
a  body  and  lashes  it  to  death  upon  the 
waves —  the  stinging  sea  slug  that  benumbs 
the  swimmer,  and  strangest  beast  of  all, 


90      THE   REACTION    FROM    AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

the  man-eating  man  —  the  cannibal  of 
the  Pacific  seas ! 

Think  of  the  wasting,  desolating  plagues 
and  epidemics,  cholera,  yellow  fever,  bubonic 
malady,  the  leprosy.  Men  did  not  invent 
such  things  surely  —  and  while  they  are 
laying  their  victims  low  in  agony,  no  hand 
from  outside  is  interposed  to  check  their 
cruel  course. 

Perhaps  the  saddest  feature  of  this  world, 
and  fraught  with  ever-threatening  danger, 
are  the  inler-racial  hatreds  and  aversions. 
Three  hundred  millions  of  Chhiese  call  us 
"  foreign  devils"  and  "  barbarians,"  and  we 
call  them  in  equally  complimentary  con- 
tempt "  chinkies  "  and  "chows,"  Two 
hundred  and  odd  millions  of  Mohomedans 
curse  us  for  "  Christian  dogs  "  and  we  call 
them  "unspeakable  Turks,"  and  though 
their  creed  is  "  death  to  the  Christians,"  of 
which  they  often  give  startling  illustrations 
as  recently  in  Armenia,  yet  when  they  ask 
for  loans  of  money  we  have  witnessed  the 
strange  parodox  of  Christians  pouring  mill- 
ions of  gold  into  their  treasury — oh  no, 
not  for  charity  or  peace  offerings  but  for 
greed  of  the  high  interest  offered,  and  the 
wily  Turk  pats  those  fat  bags  of  money 
and  says,  "  Ha,  this  will  keep  those  Chris- 
tian dogs  from  biting  —  they  can  not  now 
hurt  our  Moslem  nation,  for  fear  of  losing 


OTHER  QUESTIONS  NOT  ANSWERED  BY  SCIENCE.     91 

all  this  money  —  we  have  them  safe  in 
'  Turkish  bonds  ! '  "  and  so  he  slays  Armen- 
ian and  Greek,  and  the  bonded  "  powers  " 
stand  around  looking  very  foolish. 

There  are,  besides,  three  or  four  hundred 
milHons  of  Brahmins  and  Buddhists  as  far 
apart  from  us,  and  all  the  rest,  as  if  they 
came  from  a  different  Creator. 

And  when  those  race  aversions  reach  an 
acute  stage,  as  they  do  from  time  to  time, 
and  the  races  come  into  contact,  the  spirit 
of  human  slaughter  broods  over  men,  and 
the  earth  takes  on  the  appearance  of  a  pan- 
demonium where  the  battles  rage.  At  this 
hour,  what  we  know  as  Christendom,  is  one 
vast  military  camp.  Its  component  nations, 
in  dread  and  distrust  of  each  other,  are 
armed  with  the  deadliest  weapons  yet  in- 
vented, and  fleets  of  fearful  engines  of  de- 
struction ride  the  seas. 

Some  men,  seized  with  a  just  alarm,  are 
agitating  for  peaceful  arbitration  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  war.  But  mankind  and  human 
passions,  being  what  they  are,  they  agitate 
for  a  Utopia.  The  godless  recldessness 
which  is  a  product  of  the  ''  scientific  meth- 
od," and  which  is  so  general  in  our  times, 
makes  war  inevitable,  audits  total  abolition, 
but  a  fond  dream.  Besides  in  such  a  state 
of  society  as  the  present,  war  is  not  without 
its  uses. 


92      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

But  why  should  all  this  be? 

And  why  —  worse  even  than  this  —  is  it, 
that  as  soon  as  men  begin  to  congregate  in 
towns  and  cities,  almost  the  first  public 
structure  they  erect  is  a  jail,  to  protect 
themselves  from  violent  outbreaks  of  the 
vicious  inclinations  and  the  unruly  behavior 
of  their  fellow-citizens?  Jails  are  every- 
where, and  always  well  filled.  Depravity 
and  vice  haunt  the  outskirts  of  every 
aggregate  of  humanity,  and  men  have  to 
tax  themselves  enormously  for  protection 
from  their  troubling  and  pervading  presence. 

Besides  being  a  public  danger,  the  ruin 
brought  on  individuals  by  moral  evil,  is  in 
evidence  on  every  side,  and  the  petty,  hate- 
ful passions  that  men  bring  into  pla}^ 
against  each  other,  embitter  many  a  life, 
and  mar  the  peace  of  social  existence. 

It  would  be  pessimism  to  say  that  human 
life  was  made  up  only  of  this  dismal  cat- 
alogue of  woes,  and  pessimism  is  false,  and 
because  it  is  false,  it  is  also  wrong.  Much 
happiness  is  attainable  and  attained,  and 
few  indeed  there  are,  who  do  not  taste,  at 
some  time,  the  gladness  of  life.  But  there 
are  those  ugly  facts  which  press  us  on  every 
side,  real  and  undeniable,  and  there  is  no 
reflective  mind  that  does  not  impatiently 
ask  —  Why,  why  should  these  terrible 
things  be? 


OTHER  QUESTIONS  NOT  ANSWERED  BY  SCIENCE.     93 

And  what  answer  have  the  agnostic  scien- 
tists to  give?  Practically  none  —  they  have 
to  notice  them  of  course,  but  their  explan- 
ations bear  no  message  of  comfort  to  men, 
they  lead  rather  to  despair. 

The  arch-agnostic  Mr.  Huxley  confessed 
himself  so  puzzled  by  the  woes  of  human- 
ity, that  he  considered  the  happiest  result 
would  be,  for  some  "friendly  comet  to  col- 
lide with  this  wretched  earth  and  end  up 
the  whole  thing  in  destruction  !  " 

Mr.  Carlyle  is  represented  by  his  biog- 
rapher, Mr.  Froude,  as  going  about  perpet- 
ually moaning  and  groaning  over  the 
"  black  confusion  ''  of  things  on  which,  by 
the  way,  his  thirty  published  volumes  — the 
result  of  his  much-lauded  Golden  Silence  — 
shed  not  the  smallest  light  for  any  one. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  wTaps  himself  in  the 
clouds  of  the  dark  "Unknowable,"  and 
can  not,  of  course,  pretend  to  trace  to  any 
cause  or  permissive  will,  what  is  beyond  the 
dispensation  and  control  of  men.  The  dis- 
ciples of  Mr.  Darwin  and  the  legion  de- 
velopers of  his  evolution  theory  tell  us  as  a 
rule,  that  all  these  cruel  facts  proceed,  in 
blind  and  powerless  obedience,  from  certain 
fixed  laws,  whose  end  is  to  aid  in  the  indefi- 
nite process  of  his  great  Evolution.  All  the 
facts  of  life  are  normal  and  natural,  and 
under  the  exigency  of  law  are  working  to- 


94      THE    REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

ward  some  final  emancipation.  Whether 
this  explanation  honestly  satisfies  them- 
selves, is  their  own  affair.  It  is  but  poor 
comfort  to  the  actual  and  antecedent  suffer- 
ers in  this  "Juggernaut"  procession.  There 
is  no  man  who  does  not  feel,  that  his  is  a  per- 
sonality distinct  and  separate  from  every  one 
else  —  all  his  own.  "  What  is  to  become  of 
me?  "  has  a  most  intimate  and  exclusive 
interest  for  each  individual  person,  in- 
dependently of  every  one  else,  and  it  is  pro- 
foundly disappointing  to  be  told,  that  this 
personality,  of  which  I  am  so  intimately 
conscious,  is  but  an  irresponsible  factor  in  the 
vast  process  of  evolution  ;  an  atom  of  a  great 
aggregate  borne  upon  an  irresistible  tide  — 
whither  —  no  one  knows.  Over  and  above 
this  dismal  spoliation  of  our  personality,  no 
information,  as  already  stated,  is  given  us, 
as  to  how  we  came  to  be  cast  into  this 
whirling  evolution,  what  good  it  is  to  do  or 
what  benefit  is  ultimately  to  be  derived 
from  it. 

Thus  the  "  scientific  method  ''  has  left  the 
world  in  a  very  unsatisfactory  plight,  and 
it  is  little  wonder  that  confidence  in  its  high 
promises  of  emancipating  thought,  liber- 
ating the  human  mind  from  superstitions, 
and  elevating  our  intelligence,  has  weak- 
ened considerably. 

But  if   the  teachings  of  the  "  scientific 


OTHER  QUESTIONS  NOT.  ANSWERED  BY  SCIENCE.     95 

method"  be  cheerless  and  unsatisfying  to 
the  individual,  the  logical  results  of  its  in- 
fluence on  private  conduct  are  disastrous  to 
society.  If  men  believed  about  themselves 
what  they  read  in  the  agnostic  science- 
books,  and  proceeded  to  act  on  what  they 
learn  from  them,  the  world  in  the  long  run 
would  become  well-nigh  uninheritable.  The 
First  Cause  of  our  being,  it  is  there  stated, 
is  not  only  unknown  but  unknowable  and 
the  final  cause  just  as  undiscoverable ;  it 
then  becomes  at  once  clear  to  men  that 
they  have  no  final  responsibility  for  their 
conduct  to  any  one.  An  unknown  authority 
is  no  restraint  on  conduct,  to  a  nebulous 
judge  men  give  no  sort  of  care,  and  we 
all  know  to  what  human  conduct,  without 
restraint,  leads.  The  moment  a  man  pro- 
fesses the  principles  of  the  "  scientific 
method,"  which  unfortunately  is  too  often 
done  in  the  foolish  phrase,  "  Oh,  I  have  no 
religion;  1  do  not  believe  in  anything!" 
you  may  quite  fairly  suspect  that  man  in 
every  relation  of  life.  Suspect  his  honesty. 
With  his  principles,  it  would  be  quite  foolish 
of  him  not  to  cheat,  and  turn  everything 
else  to  his  own  advantage  by  fair  means  > or 
foul  —  when  it  can  be  safely  done.  Suspect 
him  '  of  being  hard-hearted,  selfish  and 
unfeeling.  Why  should  he  not  be,  if  it 
suits   himV     He   knows  no  authority  over 


96      THE  REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

his  personal  feelings.  Suspect  him  of 
being  vindictive  and  revengeful.  He  v^ill 
pursue  relentlessly  whoever  crosses  or  in- 
jures him.  To  gain  his  revenge  he  will  not 
stick  at  secret  murder.  Why  should  he? 
If  he  can  be  safe  from  men,  there  is  nobody 
else  to  fear. 

Suspect  his  chastity.  There  are  very 
few,  if  any  at  all,  who  are  not  intermit- 
tently solicited  by  lustful  fancies.  Will 
this  agnostic,  who  spurns  accountability 
and  writes  down  divine  commands  as  super- 
stitious lies,  hesitate  at  indulgence  wher- 
ever and  however  he  can,  when  so  inclined? 
His  logic  would  call  him  a  fool  if  he  did. 
Thus  the  free- thinking  disciple  of  the 
"scientific  method,"  unconsciously  pro- 
claims himself  an  object  of  distrust  to  his 
fellow-man  in  every  dealing  and  social 
relation  of  life,  and  they  in  turn  would  be 
very  foolish  not  to  distrust  hira.  Mutual 
trust  and  confidence  are  absolutely  necessary 
for  decent  and  tolerable  society.  The 
agnostic  principle,  if  rigidly  followed,  ut- 
terly destroys  those  pleasant  bonds,  and 
society  ceases  to  be  either  tolerable  or 
decent. 

Moreover,  the  basis  of  justice,  on  which 
human  laws  rest,  is  undermined  by  the 
scientific  method  in  its  account  of  human 
existence.     Why  should  a  judge  impose  a 


OTHER  QUESTIONS  NOT  ANSWERED  BY  SCIENCE.     97 

penal  sentence  on  one  who  quotes  the 
agnostic  evolutionist  (whom  a  great  part  of 
the  world  delights  to  honor)  for  his  asser- 
tion, that  he  is  under  the  spell  of  a  natural 
law  impelling  him  to  struggle  for  existence, 
and  that  there  is  no  being  known  to  nature 
who  has  given  prohibitory  commands,  or 
who  will  bring  him  to  account?  He  can 
plead  from  their  text,  that  his  impulses  are 
nature's  work,  not  his.  Why  punish  him 
for  them?  It  is  unjust.  He  is  but  an  irre- 
sponsible factor  in  the  great  evolutionary 
process.  When  he  cheated  and  stole,  and 
revenged  and  murdered, in  the  whole  story  of 
human  life  as  told  him  by  the  evolutionists, 
there  is  not  a  shred  of  evidence  to  show 
him  guilty  of  moral  wrong  or  wickedness. 
There  have  been,  and  are  in  our  days  ag- 
nostic judges,  Bramwells  and  Stephens,  on 
whom  the  accused  could  turn,  and  declare 
from  their  own  beliefs,  or  want  of  them, 
that  their  laws  have  no  foundation,  and 
their  courts,  frauds  on  poor  evoluted  hu- 
manity. 

The  same  would  apply  to  domestic  rule 
and  parental  authority.  The  children  could 
turn  on  agnostic  parents  and  demand  by 
what  right  they  corrected  or  punished  them, 
for  the  peccadillos  and  unruliness  to  which 
all  children  are  prone,  but  which  make  fam- 
ily life  impossible  it*   unrestrained.      The 


98      THE  REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

children  can  appeal  to  nature  and  impulse, 
sacred  in  the  eyes  of  agnostic  parents,  and 
deny  that  they  are  in  fault,  and  no  fault, 
therefore  no  correction  —  why  punish  a 
poor  evoluted  mud-fish?  how  expect  moral 
rectitude  in  a  lepidosiren  or  conscience  in 
protoplasm?  The  "scientific  method" 
cries  out  against  such  things. 

Thus  carried  to  its  logical  conclusions  in 
practical  life,  agnostic  science  would  up- 
turn human  society  from  its  very  founda- 
tion, and  convert  this  earth  into  a  pande- 
monium. 

The  clear  perception  of  this  has  shaken 
the  confidence  of  many  minds  in  this  much- 
praised  "method "of  dispensing  with  all 
information  from  the  supernatural,  and  they 
are  turning  back  again  to  the  old  ground 
for  a  more  rational  account  of  themselves, 
their  lives  and  their  destiny. 


Chapter    YII. 
The  Alternative  of  Science. 

In  contrast  to  the  unaided  and  self-reliant 
"scientific  method,"  let  us  recall  what  the 
old  story,  believed  for  so  long  a  time,  and 
by  so  many,  to  be  revealed,  tells  us  about 
ourselves. 


THE3    ALTERNATIVE   OF   SCIENCE.  99 

It  certainly  has  the  merit  of  presenting  a 
picture  of  our  origin,  which  does  not  repel 
or  put  us  to  shame.  Of  recent  years  that 
picture  has  been  kept  a  good  deal  out  of 
the^common  view,  "  skyed  "  by  the  men  of 
science.  It  has  moreover  been  smeared 
over  by  much  protoplastic  mud,  so  that 
like  a  palimpsest  manuscript,  we  must  do 
some  scraping  to  get  at  the  original  etch- 
ing—  which  means  that  it  is  not  easy  to 
induce  people,  nowadays,  to  go  over  again 
carefully,  so  familiar  a  lesson  as  the  Scrip- 
ture story  of  the  creation.  But  compared 
to  the  dismal  tale  of  the  scientists  ori  the 
same  subject,  it  is  absolutely  pleasant  and 
most  flattering  to  us.  In  place  of  mud 
swamps  where  "  lepidosirens "  swim  and 
slumber,  it  introduces  us  to  a  fair  garden 
where  golden  fruit  is  on  the  trees.  Cool, 
clear  streams  are  flowing  on  the  carpet  of 
green,  through  the  glades,  a  wondrous 
variety  of  animals,  tame  and  gentle,  peace- 
fully browse,  and  birds  of  every  hue  float 
and  sing  in  the  blue  above. 

There  is  one  form  just  moulded  and  still 
lying  upon  the  earth,  but  far  finer  and  more 
perfect  in  line  than  any  animal.  "And  over 
that  still  inanimate  form,  the  Great  Maker, 
Grod,  it  is  said —  and  said,  remark,  without 
any  explanation  or  apology  of  wearying 
demonstration,  just  as  a  matter  of  course, 


100      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

taken  for  granted  as  the  great  first  logical 
necessity  that  all  right  reason  demands  and 
postulates  —  God  breathes  !  That  creative 
and  mysterious  secret — the  spiraculum 
vitae  —  life  from  the  Divine  breathing, 
courses  at  once  through  the  finely  mod- 
eled members  of  that  prostrate  form  —  t 
glovrs  and  moves,  the  eyes  open  and  light 
up  the  features  v^ith  intelligence,  and 
then  this  last  and  greatest  of  the  Crea- 
tor's works  rises  and  stands  erect  —  the 
first  living  man.  That  is  what  we  infer 
from  the  plain  reading  of  Genesis,  and  what 
men  for  ages  have  been  satisfied  with,  and 
proud  to  believe.  But  in  these  later  times 
it  seems  that  this  will  not  do  at  all.  It  is 
too  simple,  too  plain,  too  nursery-story-like 
for  the  trained  and  powerful  modern  in- 
tellect. Facts,  it  is  alleged,  have  been 
brought  to  light  by  intelligent  research 
which  prove  that  this  was  not  —  could  not 
be  —  the  way  in  which  we  were  made. 
The  human  mind  is  surely  very  perverse  in 
this,  as  in  other  well-known  things.  You 
would  suppose,  that  a  handsomely  set-up 
being  like  man,  should  be  very  glad  just  to 
find  himself  so,  without  inquiring  too 
minutely  how  he  came  to  be  so  gifted  a 
being  —  the  first,  the  superior  among  all  the 
visible  living  things  on  this  earth.  JBut  no, 
that  position  does   not   suit   our  moderns. 


THE   ALTERNATIVE   OF   SCIENCE.  101 

They  want  to  sweep  away  that  privileged 
pre-eminence  as  a  childish  fable,  notwith- 
standing the  visible  evidence  all  around  us, 
and  reduce  man  to  the  same  common  level 
of  origin  with  the  animals,  no  greater 
specifically,  no  better  essentially.  "Grant," 
says  Mr.  Darwin,  "  a  simple  archetypal 
creature  like  a  mud-fish  with  five  senses, 
and  some  vestige  of  a  mind,  and  I  believe 
natural  selection  will  account  for  the  pro- 
duction of  every  vertebrate  animal."  Well, 
well,  I  much  prefer  the  other  story. 

And  that  story,  so  long  held  by  so  many 
of  our  race  as  a  sacred  tradition,  continues 
with  a  still  more  interesting  simplicity. 
Adam,  our  prototype  and  first  father  being 
thus  fashioned,  the  Great  Creator  makes 
over  to  him  and  his,  with  a  generous 
bounty  that  men  forget,  as  a  gift  forever, 
all  the  other  wondrous  works  of  his  creation. 
He  made  him  lord  of  creation,  with 
dominion  over  every  living  thing.  In  trial 
of  his  ownership,  Adam  summons  all  living 
things  to  his  presence,  and  lo,  they  obey 
his  call !  Submissively  they  defile  before 
him,  and  as  they  pass,  he  names  them  ac- 
cording to  their  kind.  But,  as  yet,  there 
is  a  certain  loneliness  in  his  state.  These 
animals  are  fair  to  see  in  the  grace 
and  freshness  of  their  primal  type,  but 
from    not  one   of    them   all  comes  back, 


102      THE   REACTION  THOM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

to  their  new  master,  an  answering 
voice  of  intelligence  —  no  communion 
on  equal  terms  of  soul  and  mind»  The 
Great  Maker,  however,  does  not  leave 
him  in  that  loneliness.  He  prepares  a  de- 
lightful surprise  for  him.  He  throws  him 
into  a  deep  sleep,  and  as  he  slept,  by  some 
mysterious  ^process  of  creation,  not  at  all 
necessary  for  us  to  know,  and  which  with  our 
present  limited  intelligence,  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  understand,  he  took  from  Adam's 
substance,  material  out  of  which  he  builds 
up  another  form  like  to  his  own,  and  sets 
it  over  against  him  to  look  on  when  awak- 
ened. With  what  delight  and  wonder, 
must  he  not  have  gazed  on  this  new  thing 
of  exquisite  beauty.  He  had  seen  the  ani- 
mals, and  doubtless  admired  their  wonder- 
ful formation,  but  what  animal  of  them  all 
showed  anything  like  to  that  in  shapeliness 
of  form  and  comely  grace?  Its  shape  is 
like  his  shape,  but,  oh,  more  finely,  more  del- 
icately, more  exquisitely  moulded  !  It  moves 
and  speaks,  it  comes  toward  him.  Adam 
peers  into  those  eyes  on  a  level  with  his 
own,  with  joy  he  beholds  a  responsible 
intelligence  in  their  light,  and  in  raj)ture 
exclaims,  "  Now  truly  is  this  the  flesh  of 
my  flesh  and  the  bone  of  my  bone,"  and  he 
hails  the  first  woman  as  "  Eva —  the  moth- 
er of  the  living."     This  is  how  it  reads  in 


THE  ALTERNATIVE  OF  SCIENCE.  103 

the  old,  old  story.  No  mention  being  made 
of  an  "  archetypal  creatnre  like  a  mud -fish 
with  five  senses  and  a  vestige  of  a  mind," 
the  scientists  laugh  it  to  scorn.  "I  would 
give  absolutely  nothing,"  says  Mr.  Dar- 
win, "  for  natural  selection,  if  it  requires 
miraculous  addition  at  any  one  stage  of 
descent."  "I  hope,"  said  Mr.  Tyndall  in 
his  Belfast  address,  "  to  find  in  matter  the 
origin  of  all  terrestrial  things." 

To  talk  of  the  miraculous  at  the  begin- 
ning of  things,  where  all  is  miracle  to  us, 
seems  shallow,  if  not  impertinent.  It  is 
irritating  to  think  that  puny  men,  who  pass 
away  after  a  brief  life,  fancy  themselves 
competent  from  a  mere  examination  of  fos- 
sil animal  formations,  to  enter  the  domain 
of  the  Creator,  and  infallibly  insist  that  the 
great  mystery  of  life  began  in  the  way  they 
think  they  have  discovered,  and  in  no  other. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  scientists  in 
many  countries,  nowadays, regard  the  theory 
of  evolution  as  a  scientific  truth,  some  of  our 
writers,  it  is  true,  maintain  that  evolution  is 
perfectly  compatible  with  the  story  of  Gen- 
esis, as  far  as  the  corporal  formation  of  the 
race  is  concerned.  Very  well.  If  they 
wish  to  enter  upon  that  experimental  inter- 
pretation of  the  sacred  Scriptures  they  are 
free  to  do  so.  The  Church  does  not  forbid 
it,  provided   they  hold  by  the  dogma  that 


104      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

God,  as  Creator,  is  back  of  it  all.  But  let 
them  not  forget,  in  their  enthusiasm  for 
scientific  research  and  their  complacent  ac- 
ceptance, as  scientific  truths  of  the  general- 
izations from  biological  and  geological 
facts,  that  it  is  precisely  that  dogma  which 
their  agnostic  friends  want  to  have  ignored. 
From  their  own  avowal  it  is  perfectly  well 
known  that  their  object  is  to  dispense  with 
the  necessity  or  even  the  supposition  of  a 
Divine  Creator.  To  our  orthodox  enthu- 
siasts for  evolution  this  should  be  a  note  of 
warning,  not  to  allow  themselves  to  be  led 
too  far  afield.  I  know  they  say  there  is  no 
danger ;  we  can  admit  all  the  postulates  of 
evolution  and  still  assert  that  they  are  but 
the  Creator's  modus  operandi.  That  they 
can  do  this  is  not  at  all  so  clear.  If  you 
admit  a  common  protoplastic  origin  for  all 
living  things,  and  a  subsequent  transitional 
change  from  species  to  species,  how  differ- 
entiate between  rational  and  non-rational 
creatures?  how  explain  responsibility  and 
non-responsibility,  accountability  and  non- 
accountability?  Where  does  the  rational 
basis  of  man^s  nature  come  in?  At  what 
stage  of  his  evolution  was  it  added  on? 
Was  it  as  he  was  passing  from  the  mud-fish 
into  the  reptile,  or  from  the  reptile  to  the 
bird,  or  from  the  bird  to  the  quadruped, 
or  from  the  four-footed  to  the  four-handed 


THE  ALTERNATIVE   OF  SCIENCE.  105 

animal,  or  finally  from  the  erect  quadra- 
manous,  "furnished  with  a  tail,"  into  the 
man?  Where,  and  when,  and  how,  did 
our  rational  nature  accrue  to  us?  Whence 
the  soul,  with  its  moral  sense  and  aspiration 
for  immortality?  Evolution  has  not  only  no 
word  to  tell  us  about  that,  but  it  is  impos- 
sible to  see  how  it  can  come  into  the  theory 
at  all.  The  truth  is,  biologists  and  geolo- 
gists can  legitimately  argue  on  the  subject 
of  creation  only  a  posteriori^  that  is  from 
the  few  facts  they  have  been  able  to  marshal 
from  the  skeletons  of  animal  life,  the 
process  of  generation,  and  the  surface  of 
the  earth.  This,  we  all  know,  to  be  an 
imperfect  and  fallible  method  of  deducing 
universal  conclusions  or  establishing  general 
rules.  When  scientists  pass  to  a  priori 
statements,  that  is,  lay  down  how  the 
creation  must  have  taken  place,  they  are 
guilty  of  the  fallacy  known  to  logicians  as 
the  tr  an  situs  a  genere  ad  genus  —  a  fraud- 
ulent skip  from  one  position  to  another 
position  altogether  different,  and  then  pro- 
claimingfromthe  second  whatthey  purported 
to  have  found  in  the  first.  To  make  a  "priori 
infallible  statements  as  to  the  manner  of 
creation  (which  they  do  with  seemingly 
great  security),  they  must  either  be  more 
than  men  and  share  the  creative  faculty 
themselves,  or  have  stood  on  the  level  of 


106      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

the  Creator's  platform  while  He  was  work- 
ing, which  is  of  course  absurd.  No  mat- 
ter what  may  be  its  merits  as  a  theory, 
evolution  proves  far  too  little  for  us  as 
rational,  responsible  and  accountable  men, 
and  so  will  never  satisfy  us.  It  has 
no  practical  value  for  us  as  a  light  upon 
the  meaning  of  our  origin  or  ourselves, 
and  may  just  as  well  be  relegated  to 
the  glass  cases  of  museums  as  a  curiosity 
or  conundrum  of  scientific  speculation. 
The  other  story  is  more  comprehensive  and 
satisfying  — it  is  certainly  more  agreeable, 
and  it  is  as  elevating  as  it  is  encouraging. 
It  gives  us  an  exalted  idea  of  ourselves,  to 
know  that  we  are  descended  from  a  first 
pair,  a  man  and  woman  fashioned  by  an 
Almighty  Creator,  and  endowed  with  an 
intelligence  far  above  the  rest  of  His  works. 
Secure  in  that-  thought,  we  are  safe  from 
the  despair  which  must  beset  those,  who 
believe  that  they  have  been  cast  out,  un- 
acknowledged and  disowned,  by  some  un- 
known and  brute  cause,  into  the  whirling 
mass  of  the  evolutionary  struggle.  We 
feel  that  there  is  an  intelligent  ownership 
back  of  us,  and  a  Fatherhood  above  us, 
which  will  not  permit  the  existence  we 
have  received,  to  be  merely  a  torture  and  a 
mockery  nor  the  aspirations  implanted  in 
our  breasts  —  dreams  of  Tantalus. 


*<LACHRYM^  RERUM/'  107 

There  is  hardly  a  doubt,  that  the  many 
who  are  turning  away  dissatisfied  with  the 
conclusions  of  Agnostic  Science,  will  find  a 
more  secure  and  peaceful  refuge  for  the 
mind  in  the  opening  w^ords  of  the  ancient 
creed  —  "I  believe  in  God  the  Father, 
Almighty  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth  and 
of  all  things." 


Chapter    YIII. 
"Lachrpffi  Rerum." 

If  the  story  science  has  to  tell  us  of  our 
origin  be  an  uninviting  one,  still  more  dread- 
ful are  its  lessons  about  the  evils  of  life. 
As  an  explanation  of  the  harassing  prob- 
lems of  existence,  with  its  manifold  evils, 
and  the  "tears  of  things,"  the  bare  theory 
of  natural  selection^  struggle  for  existence^ 
and  survival  of  the  fittest  is  revolting.  Ap- 
plied to  sentient  and  intelligent  beings,  it 
implies  the  infliction  of  a  shocking,  mean- 
ingless cruelty  —  a  blind,  wanton  injustice 
on  the  poor  human  race.  For  those  who 
feel  overborne  by  the  evils  of  life,  evils  that 
are  very  real  and  very  terrible,  and  have 
nothing  to  stay  them  but  this   bald  theory 


108      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

of  struggle  and  survival,  v^hat  refuge  log- 
ically remains  but 

"  To  take  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles 
And  by  opposing  end  them," 

or  to  express  it  without  poetry  —  commit 
suicide !  Many  are  doing  so  now,  almost 
daily,  in  countries  where,  formerly,  that 
stupid  revolt  against  the  Giver  of  life,  used 
to  be  extremely  rare.  Suicide  clubs,  we  are 
told,  have  even  been  formed.  Modern  sui- 
cide has  thus  assumed  a  cool  deliberateness 
where,  before,  it  used  to  be  the  unreasoned 
act  of  a  wild  despair. 

This  is  quite  as  it  should  be,  according  to 
the  "scientific  method"  of  accounting  for 
things.  If  there  were  nothing  but  that, 
it  is  a  proper  and  a  wise  thing  for  the  unfor- 
tunate to  kill  themselves.  But,  happily, 
the  great  majority  of  rational  beings  hold 
the  act  of  self-destruction,  no  matter  how 
heavily  life's  fardels  weigh,  as  a  thing  to 
be  abhorred.  Why?  Because  they  evi- 
dently do  not  trust  the  "  conclusions  of 
science,"  they  look  elsewhere  for  the. 
something  more  sustaining  that  "  gives  them 
pause,"  before  that  dread  and  tragic  act. 

They  find  the  motive  in  the  old  story  of 
revelation.  Millions  have  found  that  suffi- 
cient motive  before  them,  millions  find  it 
now,  and  millions  will  continue  to  seek,  and 


"LACHRYM^  RERUM.'*  109 

find  it  sufficient,  in  spite  of  the  fatal  deduc- 
tions from  agnostic  science. 

The  origin  of  evil  has  ever  been  the  puz- 
zle of  the  human  mind.  The  ancients 
sought  its  solution  in  the  absurdities  and 
superstitions  of  polytheism.  In  the  early 
Christian  centuries  an  Eastern  monk,  in  a 
clumsy,  but  perhaps  pious  effort  to  free 
God  from  any  share  in  it,  imagined  his  two 
eternal  and  coequal  Principles,  one  es- 
sentially good,  and  the  other  essentially 
bad,  so  that  every  good  thing  comes 
from  the  one,  and  everything  bad  from 
the  other.  This  blunt  logic  all  meta- 
physicians agree  to  call  an  absurdity, 
since  two  eternal  and  opposing  Principles 
are  impossible.  This  doctrine  had  an  im- 
mense vogue  at  the  time,  and  Manieheism, 
as  it  was  called  from  its  author,  counted 
numerous  followers  for  nearly  three  cen- 
turies. Carried  to  its  strict  conclusions  in 
practical  life,  the  sect  became  a  nuisance 
and  a  scandal,  and  its  teachings  and  prac- 
tices were  many  times  refuted  and  con- 
demned. It  is  strange  that  we  should  see 
in  our  day  a  revival  of  this  exploded  system 
Avith  the  same  good-natured  motive  of 
finding  a  convenient  escape  from  difficult- 
ies about  the  nature  of  God.  Very  re- 
cently a  little  book  called  "  Evolution  and 
Evil "    was   published    in  Edinburgh,   in 


110      THE  REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

which  the  author  harks  back  on  the  old 
Manichean  principles  to  fill  a  manifest  gap 
in  the  evolution  theory.  The  agnostic 
evolutionists  either  forgot  to  say,  or  had 
not  the  courage  of  the  absurdity,  that 
wickedness  and  crime  must  have  been  some- 
where rudimentally  inherent  in  their  proto- 
plastic mud-fish,  and  did  not  forecast  the 
time  when  jails  would  have  to  be  built,  for 
those  dear  little  creatures  evoluted  into 
men  and  women. 

This  hard-headed  Scotchman  clearly  sees, 
where  the  evolutionary  scientists  egregi- 
ously  break  down.  He  is  evidently  dis- 
satisfied with  them,  for  stopping  short  at 
the  point  of  all  others  the  most  interesting 
and  important  to  us.  But  he  has  gone  to 
tie  wrong  source  to  supply  the  omission. 

This  is  how,  in  outline,  the  origin  of  evil 
is  accounted  for  in  the  story  of  Revelation . 
The  picture,  it  now  presents  us,  is  not  as 
fair  or  cheering  as  that  in  which  it  traced 
our  origin.  It  is  indeed  a  changed  scene. 
The  prospect  is  somber,  the  sky  is  lower- 
ing, the  garden  is  full  of  weeds,  the 
animals  have  gone  wild —  for  a  dire  thing 
has  befallen  the  fortunes  of  the  first 
pair.  He  who  made  the  gift  of  all 
things  to  this  first  man  and  woman  could 
not,  of  course,  withdraw  Himself  from 
His  own  creation.     Nothing  was  more  rea- 


<  *  L ACH  RYM^  RERUM . "  111 

sonable  than  that  He  should  exact  some 
acknowledgment  from  them;  that  they 
should  at  least  continue  to  know  Him,  to 
admit  His  sovereignty,  and  show  a  grate- 
ful submission.  He  therefore  made  one 
small  reservation  from  their  free  use  of  all 
He  had  given  them,  as  a  test  of  this 
acknowledgment.  To  One  infinitely  rich 
in  creative  power,  it  did  not  really  matter 
what  that  test  was,  provided  it  was  a  test. 
And  certainly  it  does  not  seem  much  that 
He  demanded.  Of  all  this  varied  creation, 
which  he  placed  at  their  disposal.  He  in- 
formed them  that  there  was  just  one  thing 
He  wished  them  not  to  touch  or  use.  But 
this  aroused  their  curiosity,  and  through  a 
perverseness,  with  which  we  have  since  be- 
come very  familiar,  though  they  had  plenty 
of  everything  else  besides,  that  one  thing 
became  the  object  of  their  intensest  desire, 
the  very  thing  that  seemed  to  them  they 
could  least  do  without.  They  failed  in  the 
test,  they  broke  down  under  so  small  atrial, 
and  disobeyed.  There  is  the  origin  of  evil, 
the  evil  that  affects  us  in  this  human  life.  So 
Milton  said,  five  thousand  six  hundred  years 
later  expressing  the  survived  tradition  — 

"  Of  man's  first  obedience,  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree,  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  world,  and  all  our  woe, 
With  loss  of  Eden   .    .   .    sing,  heavenly  Muse." 


112      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

The  Creator  was  displeased.  Could  any- 
thing be  more  just  or  natural  than  that  He 
should  have  been?  The  first  parents  fell 
out  of  His  favor.  From  being  perfect  in 
their  kind,  as  the  highest  and  best  work  of 
the  mundane  creation,  made  in  the  image 
and  likeness  of  the  creating  Divinity,  they 
deteriorated.  The  will,  that  opposed  the 
Supreme  Will,  lost  its  strength,  the  intel- 
lect, that  shared  the  Divine  knowledge,  lost 
its  privilege,  the  image  of  the  Deity  was 
blurred  in  their  souls,  and  they  stood  in  the 
case  of  rebels.  And  when  they  began  to 
beget  children,  they  could  only  beget  them 
of  that  nature  in  which  they  themselves  were  ; 
could  impart  to  them  no  other  kind  of  nature, 
when  begetting  them,  and  so  we  all  came  to 
stand  in  the  case  of  rebels,  under  a  ban. 
This  is  the  kernel  of  the  story.  It  is  an  ac- 
count, and  the  oldest  account,  of  how  the 
misfortunes,  undeniable  and  ever-present,  of 
our  race  came  about.  It  is  at  least  an  intel- 
ligible account,  it  is  reasonable  and  most 
likely.  It  has  been  very  long  in  possession, 
and  before  it  is  cast  aside  as  a  myth,  some- 
thing better  ought  to  be  proposed  in  its 
stead.  Have  the  agnostic  scientists  given 
us  any  juster  reason,  why  humanity  is  in  a 
penal  state,  why  wickedness  abounds,  and 
calamities  afflict,  and  why  there  is  no  such 
thin  gas  perfect  and  long-continued  happiness 


"LACHRYM^  RERUM.'*  113 

or  contentment,  to  be  found  in  all  this  earth 
of  ours?  By  no  means.  Their  statements 
are  most  disheartening  in  presence  of  these 
hard  realities,  and  conduce  to  despair,  and 
they  may  thank  the  utter  helplessness  of  their 
conclusions,  for  the  reaction  that  is  steadily 
settingin  against  their  magisterial  utterances. 

On  the  other  hand  the  story  of  the  old 
tradition  is  most  hopeful  in  its  sequel.  It 
tells  of  a  restoration  and  the  "  blissful 
state"  to  be  regained,  as  Milton  words  it. 
Such  a  theory  gives  a  new  and  more  hope- 
ful complexion  to  human  life  ;  it  makes  the 
struggle  worth  enduring,  because  it  gives 
an  intelligible  and  stimulating  meaning. 
The  struggle  is  comparatively  brief,  and  at 
the  end  of  it,  is  the  possibility  of  full  and 
lasting  compensation  for  every  danger  and 
every  pain  endured.  Yes,  says  the  scien- 
tists, if  it  were  only  true  —  the  admixture 
of  the  marvelous,  such  as  the  talking 
serpent,  savors  at  once  of  the  mythical. 

But  w^hy  should  it  not  be  true?  Is  it  be- 
cause you  have  found  no  trace  of  it  in  biol- 
ogy and  geology,  that  therefore  it  did  not 
happen?  That  would  be  bad  logic.  Mean- 
while certain  facts  of  life  are  there,  and 
you  have  not  been  able  to  assign  any  ade- 
quate cause  for  them.  It  is  therefore  unfair 
of  you  to  interfere  with  those  who  fall  back 
on  the  tradition  of  the  race  about  them. 


114      THE   EEACTION  FEOM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

The  first  intelligent  progenitors  of  our 
race  were  sure  to  transmit  a  minute  and  ac- 
curate account  of  all  that  happened  at  its 
beginning  to  their  intelligent  posterity.  It 
would  be  contrary  to  the  human  mode  of 
acting  if  they  did  not.  It  is  incredible,  that 
they  never  should  have  mentioned  a  word 
on  a  subject  so  deeply  important  to  all  pos- 
terity, and  it  is  most  improbable  that  what 
they  imparted  was  not  carefully  repeated, 
at  least  substantially.  So  important  is 
it,  as  affecting  human  life  and  conduct,  that 
when  it  came  first  to  be  written  down,  mul- 
titudeshave  always  believed,  as  a  thing  rea- 
sonable and  quite  to  be  expected,  that  the 
writer  was  guaranteed  by  the  direct  action 
of  the  great  Creator  from  substantial  mis- 
take, or,  in  other  words,  inspired.  It  is 
reasonable  to  believe  all  this,  especially  as 
it  assigns  a  sufficient  cause  for  many  things 
in  human  life  and  character,  otherwise  abso- 
lutely unintelligible  to  us.  With  regard  to 
the  marvelous  incidents  of  the  story,  who 
can  tell  what  is  possible  or  impossible  to  a 
Creator  of  such  wondrous  skill  and  power 
which,  if  we  are  not  blind,  we  must 
acknowledge  him  to  possess? 

Every  man,  not  intoxicated  to  asphyxia 
with  his  own  puny  conceit,  must  honestly 
admit  that  he  has  no  locus  standi  in 
objecting  to  the  ways  selected  by  an  Agent 


"LACHRYMiE   RERUM.''  115 

immeasurably  superior  to  him,  to  bring 
about  his  purposes  no  matter  how  peculiar 
or  even  grotesque  they  may  now  seem  to 
us.  The  matter  being  beyond  our  power 
and  outside  our  province  to  interfere  in,  it 
is  wiser  to  accept  the  only  reasonable  ex- 
planation, within  our  reach,  of  the  strange 
state  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  It  is 
more  than  merely  wise  to  do  it,  it  becomes 
imperative,  when  we  see  its  practical  bear- 
ing on  our  actual  condition  in  life  and  on 
our  ultimate  fate.  Look  around  on  hu- 
manity in  general  as  we  know  it.  Is  it  not 
a  grandeur  in  ruins,  rather  than  a  bran-new 
structure  erected  on  flimsy  foundations  and 
progressing  gradually  to  completion?  When 
you  look  upon  a  stately  ruin  you  never  say. 
Here  is  something  gradually  growing  to 
perfection  ;  how  fair  it  will  be  to  look  upon 
when  completed  !  ]N"o,  you  judge  from  this 
shapely  arch,  that  bit  of  tracery  or  those 
broken  pillars  that  originally  it  had  been  a 
fine  building.  In  the  same  way  when  amid 
the  fierce  passions,  meannesses  and  deformi- 
ties of  human  nature  so  abundantly  illustra- 
ted for  us  by  history,  and  made  real  to  us  by 
our  contemporary  wars,  our  jails  and  courts 
of  law,  we  are  able  to  trace  remnants  of  a 
far  nobler  condition  in  general  impulses,  in 
deeds  of  gentle  virtue,  of  self-sacrifice  and 
heroism  —  in  love  for  the  beautiful,  the  pur- 


116      THE  REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

suit  of  it  in  art,  music,  in  poetry  —  in  the 
yearnings  for  the  good  and  the  true,  we 
say,  How  beautiful  it  must  have  been  be- 
fore the  ruin  came  !  So  that  our  personal 
experience  of  humanity  corroborates  the 
tradition,  that  man  began  with  the  perfect 
human  nature  which  some  calamity  disturbed 
and  shattered.  Even  when  some  meanness 
or  frailty  overtakes  us  individually,  the  first 
thought  that  comes  in  sober  mements  is, 
"Oh,  for  shame,  we  ought  to  have  been 
above  that !  "  showing  that  there  is  a  rem- 
nant of  a  higher,  nobler  nature  yet  within 
us. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  shape  of  man  that 
does  not  exhibit  the  remnant  of  a  nobler  na- 
ture. The  blacks  of  North  Queensland 
are  supposed  to  be  the  very  lowest  types  of 
humanity.  If  I  may  be  pardoned  a  per- 
sonal reminiscence,  I  wish  to  relate  here 
how  I  found  that  remnant  even  among 
them.  They  were  small  incidents,  it  is 
true,  but  none  the  less  they  illustrate  what 
I  say.  I  was  one  day  visiting  a  camp  of 
blacks  who  lived  on  the  warm  sand-dunes 
inside  a  mangrove  swamp,  on  the  north  side 
of  Cooktown  harbor.  In  front  of  one  of 
the  miserable  huts  which  are  only  used  as 
sleeping  places,  being  long,  narrow  and 
scarcely  three  feet  high,  a  poor  old  woman 
was  seated   on   the    ground    industriously 


**LACHRyMiE  RERUM.*'  117 

knitting,  with  very  primitive  implements,  a 
small  open-work  bag,  such  as  children 
might  use  for  school-books.  The  material 
was  the  native  twine  made  from  dried  fiber 
and  dyed  in  different  colors.  Anxious  to 
get  a  memento  of  the  rude  skill  of  this 
very  backward  people,  who  seemed  to  me  in 
their  homes  to  have  touched  the  lowest  rung 
of  the  human  ladder,  I  put  a  silver  coin  in 
her  hand  and  made  signs  that  I  wanted  the 
bag.  She  looked  at  it  and  shook  her  head, 
which  I  took  to  mean  that  she  would  not 
part  with  it.  It  was  not  so,  however.  One 
of  the  men  came  up  and  managed  to  ex- 
plain that  she  did  not  wish  to  give  it  to  me 
unfinished,  but  would  finish  it  as  soon  as 
possible  and  send  it  over  to-morrow.  Con- 
sidering that  it  was  a  good  four  miles  across 
the  water,  I  thought  the  chances  of  getting 
it  very  slight,  still  I  left  her  in  possession 
of  the  coin  and  passed  on.  As  we  were  at 
breakfast  on  the  trellised  veranda  of  the 
house  at  which  I  was  staying  in  the  town 
at  7 :30  the  next  morning,  two  of  those 
coal-black  natives  timidly  approached,  hold- 
ing up  that  bag !  Honorable,  was  it  not,  in 
that  poor  creature? 

Another  day,  strolling  by  the  shore,  I 
saw  some  Chinese  heche-de-mer  fishers  bar- 
gaining with  a  native  black.  Their  net,  it 
appears,  had  got  fouled  in  the  deep  chan- 


118      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

nel  some  distance  from  the  shore.  These 
blacks  are  famous  divers,  and  the  Chinamen 
were  inducing  him  to  go  down  to  free  their 
net.  He  at  length  consented,  and  put  off 
with  them  in  their  boat.  At  that  moment 
his  wife,  carrying  a  small  child,  came  run- 
ning down.  It  was  too  late  to  stop  him,  so 
she  stood  with  riveted  gaze  looking  at  that 
boat.  Beauty  is  not  a  strong  point  in  those 
poor  people,  in  fact  it  is  not  a  point  at  all, 
but  it  was  beautiful  to  see  the  play  of  fine 
qualities  of  soul  and  heart  in  that  poor  black 
face.  The  job  turned  out  somewhat  trou- 
blesome, and  the  diver  had  to  make  three 
different  descents  to  the  rocky  bottom,  re- 
maining down  what  seemed  to  be  quite  a 
long  time,  each  dive.  While  he  was  under 
water  the  young  wife  seemed  beside  herself. 
I  do  not  think  I  ever  saw  such  genuine 
feeling  expressed  in  any  face,  white  or 
black —  there  was  tenderness,  protest,  de- 
voted love  in  it,  and  when  he  came  safe  to 
shore,  relief  with  a  sort  of  sad,  reproachful 
delight.  Beautiful  remnant  of  the  nobler 
nature  even  in  the  dregs  of  humanity !  I 
can  not  help  adding  in  illustration  of  the 
abominable  meanness  of  man  that,  a  few 
minutes  later,  I  saw  those  Chinamen  cheat 
that  poor  black !  They  put  him  off  with 
two  ounces  of  coarse  tobacco  and  a  hand- 
ful of  istale  biscuit,  for  a  task  that  gold 


119 

coin  would  not  have  induced  themselves  to 
undertake.  The  poor  fellow  took  that 
squalid  pay  quite  meekly  and  went  away. 
There  be  yellow  men,  thought  I,  in  some 
things,  lower  than  Queensland  Blacks. 

Is  it  not  more  rational  to  believe  that  such 
virtues  have  been  left  in  a  nature  once  all 
virtuous,  and  that  such  vices  come  from  its 
deterioration,  than  to  assert  that  both  are 
developed  out  of  mud-fish? 

Mere  science  leaves  man  without  hope  in 
his  miseries.  It  admits  them  as  facts ;  it 
even  points  them  out,  but  gives  no  satis- 
factory reason  why  they  are  there,  and  sup- 
plies no  motive  for  the  patient  endurance  of 
them.  Doleful,  indeed,  if  not  cruel,  is  its 
attitude  in  presence  of  the  universal  fact  of 
death.  When  the  quickly  passing  life  of 
each  individual  is  over,  and  he  must  leave 
behind  all  he  loved,  prized,  and  strove  for, 
science  stands  by  in  pitiable  and  helpless 
silence. 

Not  so  the  theories  of  revealed  tradition. 
It  has  the  story  of  a  reconciliation  between 
a  displeased  Creator  and  ungratefully  delin- 
quent creatures.  The  nature  passed  on  to 
their  progeny  by  the  first  pair,  after  their 
disobedience,  is  to  undergo  a  process  of 
restoration  by  the  proffered  intervention 
of  the  Godhead,  and,  by  the  fulfillment 
of  new  and  not  very   difficult  conditions, 


120      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

the  title-deeds,  forfeited  by  the  bankrupt 
parents,  to  the  "bUssful  state,"  are  to  be 
given  back  to  all  the  children  of  men. 
Here  at  once  a  meaning  is  given  to  human 
life,  the  touch-spring  is  suppHed  to  human 
action.  The  trial  and  the  struggle  endure, 
it  is  true,  for  each  individual  of  the  race. 
But  the  very  possibility  of  reinstatement  is 
an  end  worth  his  efforts.  The  great  sanc- 
tions for  upright  conduct  are  kept  ever 
present  to  him  —  immense  reward  for  suc- 
cess—  penalty  for  willful  failure.  These, 
with  the  higher  feeling  of  loyalty  to  the 
intentions  of  the  benevolent  Creator,  sup- 
ply motive  power  to  the  whole  moral 
world.  They  are  the  real  and  efficient 
agency  for  civilizing  humanity,  and  have 
been  admitted  and  are  still  admitted  by  the 
majority  of  men,  to  be  the  best  the  world 
has  got  up  to  the  present  moment.  They 
have  inspired  and  still  continue  to  inspire 
all  that  is  best  in  heroic  self-devotion. 
They  sweeten  social  life,  help  to  the  patient, 
if  not  cheerful  endurance  of  pain  and  sor- 
row, and  altogether  have  proved  far 
too  practically  useful  to  the  human  family, 
to  be  contemned  and  renounced  at  the 
summons  of  a  science,  which  has  but  a 
gospel  of  darkness  and  despair  to  offer  in 
their  stead.  That  which  has  been  the 
mainstay  of  millions  of  the  most  civilized 


121 


people  in  the  past,  and  has  best  reconciled 
them  to  life  in  its  varying*  fortunes,  it 
would  be  most  unwise  to  discard  until  at 
least  something  as  good  has  been  found. 
It  is  certain  that  the  results  of  scientific 
research  supply  no  such  substitute.  A 
great  multitude  in  our  time  have  been  led 
away  by  the  ably-edited  pretensions  of  the 
scientists,  and  have  laid  aside  the  guiding 
motives  of  life  derived  from  faith,  relin- 
quishing all  external  observances  of  religion. 
Yet  the  restlessness  of  minds  has  by  no 
means  abated.  It  shows  itself,  in  many 
ways  at  this  hour,  to  be  as  great  if  not 
greater  than  ever.  The  recent  closing  of 
the  grave  over  many  of  the  men  who  made 
the  greatest  stir  in  the  mental  world  for  the 
past  forty  years,  has  given  food  for  sober- 
ing reflection  to  many  of  their  disciples  and 
admirers  who,  weary  of  the  emptiness  of 
their  master's  conclusions,  are  longing 
again  for  the  comfort  of  a  confident  and 
unfaltering  faith. 

They  found  its  formula,  regarding  our  ori- 
gin, in  the  opening  words  of  the  old  Creed 
already  quoted.  The  second  part  of  that 
Creed  gives  motive  and  meaning  for  the 
human  life  they  are  actually  leading :  — 
"  And  I  believe  in  Jesus  Christ,  His  only 
Son  Our  Lord,  who  for  us  men  and  for  our 
eternal  safety,  came   out  of  the   heavens, 


122      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

and  took  flesh  through  the  Holy  Spirit  from 
Mary,  the  Virgin,  and  was  made  man.  He 
was  also  crucified  for  ns,  suffered,  and  was 
buried.  And  the  third  day  He  arose  from 
the  dead  and  ascended  to  the  heavens; 
thence  He  shall  come  to  judge  the  living 
and  the  dead." 

This  describes  the  restoration  of  the  race 
and  the  final  issue  that  awaits  it.  He  who 
raised  it  up  again,  helped  it  and  made  sal- 
vation possible  for  its  members,  will  also  be 
their  Judge. 

"  Oh,  but  this  is  bringing  us  back  to  our 
catechism  again—  it  is  faith  and  most  of  it 
must  be  taken  on  trust!  "  Precisely,  and 
why  should  you  be  ashamed  of  it?  Lift 
yourself  above  your  little  self  and  think  of 
the  distinguished  men — men  whose  tran- 
scendent ability  is  admitted  on  all  bands  — 
who  at  the  present  day  all  around  you, 
openly  believe  and  advocate  all  that.  Mr. 
Gladstone  does  so,  and  who  will  deny  his 
superiority  of  intellect?  England's  great 
Prime  Minister  Lord  Salisbury  believes  it 
all.  England's  Lord  Chancellor  believes 
it,  so  does  conspicuously  her  Lord  Chief 
Justice,  so  do  most  of  her  able  jurists.  So 
do  her  ablest  diplomatists  Lord  Dufferin, 
Sir  Kutherford  Alcock  (lately  deceased 
after  a  most  distinguished  career),  Sir 
Philip  Currie,  Lord  Brassey  and  the  present 


**STATIO   BENE   FIDA."  123 

able  Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  Russia, 
Sir  'N.  O'Connor.  President  McKinley 
believes  it,  so  do  his  living  predecessors  in 
that  highest  of  all  America's  positions,  Mr. 
Harrison  and  Mr.  Cleveland.  These  are 
but  some  of  the  great  names,  and  is  your 
judgment  likely  to  be  of  more  value  than 
the  convictions  of  such  men  as  these? 
Why,  before  such  an  array  of  ability  on 
the  side  of  belief,  the  cynical  apostasy  of  a 
John  Morley  (vide  his  "Voltaire"),  the 
ravings  of  Thomas  Carlyle  as  exhibited  by 
his  trusty  showman,  Mr.  Froude,  and  the 
poisoned  shafts  of  Prof.  Huxley  —  the  Bob 
Ingersoll  of  England  —  seem  impertinences 
of  no  weight  whatever. 

Yes,  the  goal  of  the  return  from  this  un- 
satisfying agnostic  science  is  faith,  belief  in 
the  communications  vouchsafed  to  us  by 
the  Great  Master,  Owner,  and  Maker  of  us 
and  of  all  things. 


Chapter    IX. 
"Statio  Bene  Fida." 


No  one,  at  all  observant  of  the  signs  of 
his  times,  can  fail  to  see  this  movement 
away  from  agnostic   science  and   back  to 


124      THE  KEACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

belief.  But  is  there  a  sure  haven  for  the 
unrest  of  the  returning?  If  unfaith  and 
faith  were  just  two  camps,  the  question 
would  be  simple  enough.  Unfortunately 
the  ungovernable  tendencies  of  human 
thought,  its  refusal  to  be  restricted,  its 
opposition  to  restraint,  no  matter  how 
reasonable  that  restriction  and  restraint  may 
be  demonstrated  to  be,  have  divided  the 
followers  of  faith  into  many  camps.  This 
being  a  fact  and  a  sad  one,  it  is  too  well 
known  to  be  denied,  and  too  real  and 
present  with  us  to  be  ignored.  This 
domestic  quarrel  has  been  the  excuse  for 
agnosticism,  and  is  the  strong  point  with 
the  remaining  adherents  of  that  forlorn 
cause.  In  any  sincere  effort,  then,  to  be 
of  use  as  a  guide  to  the  unrestful  soul,  after 
its  incautious  excursion  into  the  bewildering 
maze  of  agnostic  science,  this  unpleasant 
fact  must  be  faced  and  honestly  weighed. 
True,  it  has  the  disadvantage  of  making 
the  writer  appear  in  the  light  of  a  special 
pleader  for  his  own  views,  and  special 
pleading  arouses  suspicion  and  arms  preju- 
dice. "  Oh,  he  is  fighting  for  his  own  side 
of  course  —  all  he  says  is  sure  to  be  biased 
in  favor  of  the  section  to  which  he  be- 
longs." And  so,  when  there  are  contend- 
ing interests,  it  is  hard  to  get  a  hearing  for 
the  special  plea. 


**  STATIC    BENE   FIDA."  125 

I  therefore  wish  to  avoid  all  appearance 
of  that  as  much  as  possible,  and  merely  in- 
vite the  reader  to  the  inspection  of  facts  as 
they  exist  about  us.  Facts  are  the  most 
persuasive  of  arguments.  They  are  not  so 
dry  as  polemics. 

I  suppose  then  that  the  intelligent 
wanderer,  in  quest  of  the  dropped  threads 
of  his  old  faith,  would  like  to  give  in  his 
adherence  to  a  body  of  doctrine  about 
which  there  is  no  uncertainty,  fluctuation, 
or  dispute  among  its  particular  followers, 
rather  than  to  one  about  which  there  is 
much  dispute,  divergence,  and  dissent 
among  those  who  variously  profess  it. 

I  suppose  he  would  prefer  to  join  a  body 
that  has  a  long  and  continuous  history,  to 
one  that  has  a  much  shorter  and  somewhat 
broken  history.  I  suppose  he  would  feel 
more  secure  in  associating  with  a  body 
which  is  numerically  greater,  while  agree- 
ing among  themselves  as  a  unit,  than  all 
other  dissidents  from  that  body  put  togeth- 
er and  disagreeing  among  themselves.  I^ow 
such  exactly  are  the  characteristics  of  the 
two  phases  of  Christianfaith  which, as  mere 
facts,  visibly  and  undeniably  confront  him 
in  the  world  to-day. 

Everybody  knows  who  Leo  XIII  is.  He 
is  the  two  hundred  and  fifty-seventh,  in 
direct  succession,  of  the  pontiffs  who  held 


126      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

his  place  in  Eome  for  nearly  nineteen  cen- 
turies. Everybody  knows  that  there  are 
over  one  thousand  bishops  all  over  the 
world,  men  of  education  and  intelligence, 
many  of  them  of  admittedly  high  intelli- 
gence, who  all  hold  their  place  and  title 
from  him,  acknowledge  his  authority,  and 
are  in  perfect  agreement  with  him  in  every 
essential  particular.  Under  them  there 
are  between  two  and  three  hundred  thou- 
sand clergy  in  the  same  perfect  agreement 
with  their  bishops,  and  under  them  again 
between  two  and  three  hundred  million  of 
laity  in  perfect  accord  with  their  pastors. 
No  danger  of  our  friend  feeling  lonely  in 
such  a  company  at  any  rate.  Let  him 
enter  the  poorest  of  their  churches,  be  it  on 
an  Irish  mountain-side  or  in  a  bush-town  at 
the  Antipodes,  or  one  of  the  famous  cathe- 
drals of  continental  Europe  or  in  the 
Spanish  Americas,  he  will  hear  the  same 
identical  doctrine  taught  in  each  and  all, 
and  the  same  rite  of  divine  worship  ob- 
served. That  must  appeal  to  him  as  some- 
thing admirable,  and  arrest  his  interested 
attention. 

Here,  then,  is  one  broad  fact,  easily  veri- 
fiable, spread  out  to  his  view  at  this  mo- 
ment. 

Everybody  knows,  also,  who  the  young 
Tsar  Nicholas   is.     He   is   the   head  of  a 


127 

church,  a  very  numerous  church,  but  his 
title  as  such  does  not  reach  very  far  back, 
at  most  to  his  savage  ancestor,  Peter,  in 
the  last  century,  while  the  faith  of  that 
church,  which  came  from  Greece,  is  sub- 
stantially the  Roman  faith,  only  marred  by 
a  break  in  allegiance  to  the  lawful  successor 
of  the  apostles,  and  by  denial  of  his  author- 
ity as  divinely  appointed  judge  and  guard- 
ian of  that  faith. 

Everybody  knows  who  Emperor  William 
II  is.  He  is  the  head  of  a  church  w^hose 
title  goes  back  only  a  few  centuries,  and  the 
faith  of  that  church  is  in  entire  disagree- 
ment with  that  of  the  Greek  and  Russian, 
and  only  a  very  fragmentary  agreement 
indeed  with  that  of  the  Roman,  while  from 
the  principle  of  free  private  judgment  and 
by  consequence  the  lack  of  a  standard  with- 
in its  own  limits,  there  is  abundant  domestic 
disagreement  and  independent  sectional 
branches. 

Everybody  knows  who  Queen  Yictoria  is. 
She  is  the  head  of  a  church,  but  her  title  to 
spiritual  supremacy  passed  to  her  only  in- 
directly from  the  Tudor  line  of  monarchs 
from  whom  she  is  not  even  descended,  and 
w^ho  usurped  that  sacred  title  only  a  few 
hundred  years  ago  because  of  a  rebellious 
quarrel  with  the  Pope  over  an  adulter- 
ous marriage.     Meanwhile,   the  Anglican 


128      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

Church  is  entirely  independent  as  to  author- 
ity and  standard  of  belief,  from  the  Greek- 
Russian  and  the  German-  Lutheran. 
Within  the  English  fold,  too,  the  right  of 
private  judgment  prevails,  and  has  been  a 
powerful  dissolvent.  As  a  result  there  are 
nearly  two  hundred  distinct  and  independent 
reUgioQS  sects  in  England  and  throughout 
the  wide  domain  of  her  colonial  empire, 
and  also  in  English-speaking  America  the 
same  strange  spectacle,  in  proportionate 
extent,  may  be  witnessed.  Indeed  the 
ultimate  logical  result  of  this  free  private 
judgment  seems  to  be  —  as  many  religions 
as  there  are  men.  And  is  it  not  a  curious 
thing,  that  men  demand  a  freedom  in  relig- 
ious matters  not  permitted  them  in  matters 
of  State,  or  in  other  relations  of  life?  The 
State  does  not  tolerate  private  judgment 
about  its  constitution  and  its  laws,  if  carried 
into  practice,  as  it  is,  so  unrestrainedly,  in 
religion. 

However,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  is  the 
other  phase  of  Christian  faith  presented  to 
actual  view  by  the  most  civilized  of  the 
nations  to-day.  That  this  is  pretty  accur- 
ately their  condition  nobody  can  deny,  as  it 
is  a  thing  of  common  and  public  notoriety. 

Now  is  it  likely  that  our  friend  will  light- 
ly commit  his  spiritual  hopes  and  future 
welfare  to  such  a  Babel  confusion  of  relig- 


<*  STATIC   BENE  FIDA."  129 

ious  guidance?  Common  prudence  and 
sound  sense  would  deter  him  from  so  little 
promising  a  course.  Besides  if  he  hears 
of  the  prayer  of  the  Divine  Founder  of  the 
whole  system  —  "  that  the  world  may  Tcnow^ 
O  Father^  that  Thou  hast  sent  tne^  let  these 
he  one  as  Thou  art  in  me  and  lin  Thee^^ 
—  it  will  be  clear  to  him,  that  there  must 
be  something  very  wrong  about  all  these 
people,  for  they  are  not  one,  but  two 
hundred  churches.  It  would  therefore.be 
something  more  than  imprudent,  it  would 
be  rash  and  dangerous,  to  follow  after  their 
wav. 

If  he  is  to  subscribe  in  full  to  Chris- 
tianity, from  which,  supposedly,  he  orig- 
inally started  out  in  quest  of  something 
new,  he  has  but  one  alternative.  The  fact 
of  the  marvelous  unity  combined  with 
great  numerical  strength,  of  historical 
tradition,  will  forcibly  appeal  to  his  logical 
mind  and  incline  him  to  become  one  of  the 
two  hundred  and  fifty  millions  who  own 
Leo  as  visible  chief. 

However,  it  must  be  admitted  that  he 
will  be  confronted  with  another  fact,  for 
which  the  restlessness  of  certain  minds  in 
other  disrupted  branches  of  Christianity  is 
accountable.  There  have  been  many  in 
our  day  who,  not  venturing  to  go  the 
whole  daring  length  of  total  unbelief  under 


130      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

the  lead  of  agnostic  scientists  on  the  one 
hand,  and  not  content,  on  the  other,  to 
rest  under  the  restraining  soul-disciphne  of 
Christianity,  have  bethought  them  of  the 
Buddhistic  faith  of  the  Far  East,  which 
seemed  to  them  to  impose  the  minimum  of 
individual  obligation  and  to  be  free  from 
harassing  complications  of  doctrine.  Hence 
the  recent  introduction  of  what  has  been 
named  Theosophy  among  the  more  civile 
ized  peoples. 

I  doubt  if  this  curious  cult  will  arrest  the 
attention  of  any  capable  or  reflective  mind 
for  any  long  time.  It  has  had,  however,  a 
certain  vogue,  and  its  present  standing 
may  be  examined  not  unprofitably.  It  is 
as  hard  to  get  any  precise  statement  of  this 
new  osopliy  or  of  the  Buddhism  it  is  sup- 
posed to  represent,  as  the  late  Professor 
Freeman  said  it  was  to  fix  Freemasonry  as 
a  historical  fact,  or  come  at  any  reliable 
evidence  about  it  (^Italy^  page  34) . 

In  a  certain  American  university  the  dis- 
satisfied Christians  of  a  philosophy-class 
not  very  long  ago,  with  a  view  to  adopting 
Theosophy  as  a  substitute  for  the  faith  of 
their  fathers,  invited  a  Hindoo  Bonze  or 
priest,  named  Dharmapala,  to  give  them  an 
authentic  and  concise  version  of  Buddhism. 
To  elicit  more  readily  what  they  wanted 
to    know,    they    decided    to    proceed    by 


"STATIC  BENE   FID  A."  131 

way  of  question  and  answer,  so  they 
put  tip  the  Hindu  on  the  platform 
of  their  hall  for  interrogation,  and  ap- 
pointed their  professor  as  leading  cross- 
examiner.  But  it  soon  appeared  that  the 
professor  was  like  a  man  diving  on  a  rub- 
ber surface,  he  could  not  get  under.  After 
several  questions,  answered  in  the  high- 
flowing  and  vague  style  of  the  Hindus,  this 
professor,  who  himself  was  evidently  tired 
of  the  version  of  Christianity  as  taught  in 
one  of  the  two  hundred  sects  in  which  he 
was  brought  up,  seemed  to  lose  patience 
and  exclaimed  with  an  air  of  profound  dis- 
appointment :  "  But  all  this  scarcely  differs 
from  what  Christianity  exacts."  Nirvana, 
being  the  heart  of  the  system,  the  profes- 
sor next  questioned  him  about  this.  What 
was  its  nature?  how  was  it  to  be  attained? 
and  when  attained  what  was  it  like?  On 
these  points  Dharmapala  discoursed  in 
grandiose  and  soaring  phrases,  to  which 
the  examiner  frankly  declared  he  could  at- 
tach no  practical  meaning.  He  finally 
asked  the  learned  Bonze  to  give  them  a 
short,  intelligible  description  of  what  they 
might  expect  in  the  state  of  Nirvana ;  he 
replied  that  "  no  one  having  yet  attained  to 
it,  it  would  be  impossible  to  do  so  !  "  A 
full  account  of  this  proceeding  appeared 
in  the    San  Francisco  papers  in  the  early 


132      THE   REACTION  FKOM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

summer  of  the  year  1897.  But  we  have 
not  since  been  informed  whether  a 
temple  to  Buddha  has  been  erected  in  this 
very  eclectic  Calif ornian  university. 

An  effort  was  made  to  popularize  Bud- 
dhism among  the  upper  classes  in  England 
under  the  pontifical  patronage  of  Mr.  Edwin 
Arnold  before  he  was  made  a  knight  (and 
there  was  a  time  when  the  English  Court 
would  not  have  admitted  an  English  Bud- 
dhist among  its  equerries) ,  but  it  took  no 
hold  there.  The  event  of  Madam  Blavatsky 
and  Prof.  Max  Muller's  able  exposure  of 
that  lady's  ignorance  and  charlatan  preten- 
sions, may  be  considered  the  requiem  of 
Theosophy  as  far  as  England  is  concerned. 
The  theosophical  priestess  subsequently  re- 
moved her  headquarters  to  Paris.  Among 
a  certain  class  of  the  French,  ever  ready  to 
experiment  with  the  newest  sensation,  she 
met  with  some  success,  but  her  poor,  clumsy 
conjuring  with  familiar  spirits  from  the 
Pamirs,  was  exposed  by  a  fellow-country- 
man, the  editor  of  a  St.  Petersburg  journal. 
He  wrote  a  biography  of  this  Mrs.  Blavat- 
sky, and  not  the  least  useful  of  the  labors 
of  the  London  Psychical  Research  Society 
was  the  translation  of  that  remarkable  and 
sadly  interesting  book  and  its  circulation 
over  the  English  speaking  world.  How 
any  sane  person  could  continue  to  pursue 


*<  STATIC   BENE   FIDA.'*  133 

this  phantom  of  a  faith  after  reading  this 
book  passes  comprehension. 

It  is  true  that  Mrs.  Blavatsky's  very 
erratic  disciple,  Mrs.  Besant,  published  an- 
other biography  enthusiastically  favorable 
to  her,  but  it  was  manifestly  compiled  from 
material  supplied  by  the  most  interested  of 
witnesses,  the  lady  whose  praises  are  sung. 

It  is  also  true  that  much  has  been  said  in 
favor  of  the  purer  forms  of  Buddhism,  nota- 
bly by  Mr.  Max  Muller,  and  the  word  of 
that  wonderful  scholar  is  of  great  weight. 
But  by  the  purer  forms  the  professor  is 
careful  to  explain,  the  high  moral  maxims 
which  he  found  in  its  ancient  writing. 
Surely  we  need  not  go  to  Ceylon  or  Thibet 
for  high  moral  maxims  !  Are  they  not  to  be 
found  as  high  as  any  one  need  desire  in  the 
book  from  which,  with  scarcely  any  doubt, 
Guatama  Buddha  himself  and  his  disciples 
largely  borrowed  —  the  Old  Testament  — 
and  which  the  lifew  Christian  Testament 
indorses  and  adopts? 

Much  is  made,  too,  of  the  statement  that 
Buddhism  is  the  religion  of  three  hundred 
millions  of  the  human  race.  But  far  too 
much  is  made  of  this.  Without  due  exam- 
ination, that  broad  statement  is  certahily 
calculated  to  impress  and  disturb  the 
ordinary  un-Buddhistic  mind.  But,  first, 
supposing  them  three  hundred  million  —  it 


134      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

may  be  asked,  "What  is  the  quality  of  that 
portion  of  the  human  race?  'Are  the  peo- 
ple composing  it  among  the  foremost,  best 
educated  and  most  civilized  peoples  of  the 
world?     Surely  not. 

Again  the  statement  itself  is  contested. 
Travelers,  who  have  come  from  the  Eastern 
lands,  assert  that  this  number,  as  represent- 
ing those  who  are  really  Buddhists,  is 
enormously  exaggerated.  I  have  seen  it 
reduced  by  some  writers  to  as  much  as  one- 
tenth  ! 

But  even  allowing  for  a  very  great  num- 
ber, it  is  beyond  doubt  that  the  divisions  and 
differences  among  them  in  creed  and  prac- 
tice far  exceed  even  the  fragments  into 
which  the  so-called  reformed-Christianity 
is  split. 

Almost  the  first  object,  that  greeted  the 
visitor  to  the  last  great  "World  Exhibition 
in  Paris,  was  a  huge  statue  of  Buddha. 
Any  civilized  man  gazing  at  that  most  in- 
artistic, clumsy  and  stupid-looking  travesty 
of  the  human  form,  must  have  felt  nothing 
but  aversion,  and  passed  on,  with  a  sigh  of 
pity  for  the  aberrations  of  the  human  mind, 
when  abandoned  to  its  own  purblind  grop- 
ing for  the  great  secret. 

Mahomedanism  will  also  greet  our  friend 
as  another  of  the  world's  great  facts  in 
supernaturalism.    To  find  what  is  attractive 


*'STATIO  BENE  FID  A."  135 

or  of  value  in  that,  he  has  but  to  do  two 
things  —  examine  what  historians  who  write 
of  the  sixth  century  have  to  say  of  its 
founder  —  that  remarkable  Bedouin  camel- 
driver  of  this  period, and  of  his  preceptor,  the 
ex-Nestorian  monk.  Next,  reflect  on  what 
is  the  lowest  animal  instinct  in  men  and 
what  Mahomedanism  promises  and  permits 
in  satisfaction  of  it.  When  he  has  done 
this,  it  can  be  safely  left  to  himself  to  say, 
whether  respect  for  his  own  intelligence 
and  regard  for  our  w^eaker  and  gentler  sis- 
ters, will  permit  him  to  enrol  himself  among 
the  followers  of  the  prophet's  present  rep- 
resentative, whom  an  English  statesman 
has  proclaimed  to  our  age  as  "  the  great 
Assassin." 

He  will  encounter  still  another  fact  in  the 
world  of  religions,  far  less  in  proportion 
than  the  last,  but  far  greater  in  significance 
and  even  mystery.  He  will  see  a  people 
some  seven  millions  in  number,  scattered 
through  the  world,  owning  no  country,  yet 
as  distinct  and  apart  from  all  other  peoples, 
as  if  their  "  place  and  nation  "  had  not  been 
taken  away.  If  he  read  history  aright  he 
will  think  gently  of  the  Jew.  He  will  for- 
get Shakespeare's  Jew  —  the  worldly  and 
commercial  Jew,  that  deals  in  "usance" 
and  "pounds  of  Christian  flesh."  He  will 
remember  this  people  for  their  grand  tradi- 


136      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

tion.  He  will  remember  them  as  the  pro- 
genitors of  our  whole  race,  as  the  chosen 
people  of  God,  and  of  old  time,  His  most 
favored  nation.  He  will  think  of  them  as 
the  people  whose  influence  on  the  world 
stands  first  and  without  any  rival ;  and  he 
will  think  of  them  in  the  later  time  when, 
alas  I  they  let  their  day  go  by,  and  standing 
belated  by  the  wayside,  allowed  their  sacred 
inheritance  to  pass  to  the  Gentile.  He  will 
think  of  them  then,  as  the  poor  outlawed, 
hunted  race,  driven  and  persecuted  for  weary 
centuries  at  the  hands  of  those  whom  the  di- 
vine compassion  of  their  gentle  Master,  Him- 
self of  Jewish  blood,  should  have  taught  hu- 
maner  methods.  He  will  recognize  in  their 
marvelous  preservation  a  divine  intention  and 
a  lingering  of  divine  regard.  He  will  recog- 
nize remnants  of  their  greatness  in  their 
great  intelligence  which,  when  the  opening 
comes  to  them,  makes  them  still  leaders 
among  men,  as  it  has  at  this  hour  made 
them  princes  in  the  world's  commerce. 
And  finally,  he  will  remember  them  as  the 
people  of  a  prophecy  yet  to  be  fulfilled, 
which  tells  that  their  latest  progeny  on 
earth  will  be  rallied  to  the  spiritual  king- 
dom of  Him,  whom  their  fathers,  foiled  in 
their  mistaken  hopes  for  national  glory,  re- 
jected and  delivered  over  to  torture  and 
to  death. 


IMPORTANT  AND  PRACTICAL.       137 

It  is  not  good  in  us  to  think  unkindly  of 
Jews  when  the  Master's  latest  prayer  was 
for  their  forgiveness. 

They  are  a  living  fact  in  our  world  to- 
day. In  their  creed  they  profess  and  pos- 
sess the  truth  —  the  genuine  truth  —  that 
we  too  hold  in  honor  —  only  they  have 
halted  short  of  its  divine  fulness. 

Such  is  the  full  prospect  before  those 
who  are  returning  disappointed  and  empty 
from  their  agnostic  experiences.  If  to  the 
careful  use  of  their  intelligence,  they  but 
add  a  humble  prayer  for  guidance  and  for 
strength,  there  is  little  doubt  which  anchor- 
ing ground  will  appear  to  them  the  statio 
hene  fida  —  the  right  trusty  harbor  for 
their  souls. 


Chapter    X. 
Important  and  Practical. 

The  returning  agnostic  will  find  that  in 
the  ''safe  harbor,"  indicated  in  the  last 
chapter,  his  love  of  science  need  not,  by 
any  means,  be  shed  at  its  entrance  nor  its 
fas'cinating  pursuit  be  necessarily  aban- 
doned. 

Though  the  parent  church  of  Christianity 
does  not  assign  the  place  of  first  importance 


138      THE    REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

to  the  study  of  the  natural  sciences,  she  is 
far  from  forbidding  that  study  to  her  mem- 
bers. This  very  year  1897  gives  a  striking 
proof  of  this.  The  Fourth  Catholic  Scien- 
tific Congress  was  held  at  Fribourg  in 
Switzerland  at  the  end  of  the  summer.  The 
most  eminent  Catholic  scientists  —  and 
their  number  is  not  small  — were  invited  to 
attend.  The  meeting  was  thoroughly 
representative  of  the  Catholic  world. 
There  v/ere  delegates  from  Great  Britain, 
Ireland,  the  United  States,  France,  Spain, 
Italy,  Austria,  Germany  and  Belgium. 
Two  hundred  papers,  on  scientific  subjects, 
were  read  at  the  sessions  of  the  Congress. 

Almost  every  branch  of  human  knowl- 
edge was  discussed — the  social  question, 
law,  history,  political  economy,  physics, 
mathematics,  astronomy,  biology,  art,  phi- 
losophy, religion.  Surely  a  syllabus  ample 
enough  to  satisfy  the  most  ambitiously  sci- 
entific. All  these  had  their  share  of  friendly 
debate.  The  leading  and  most  useful  fea- 
ture of  the  discussions  seems  to  be  an  hon- 
est effort  to  determine  what  has  been  really 
demonstrated  in  science  and  what  has  not, 
thereby  separating  true  science  from  that 
which  has  not,  as  yet,  established  its  title 
to  that  august  name. 

The  Head  of  the  Catholic  Church,  far 
from  frowning  on  this  enterprise,  as  fraught 


IMPORTANT   AND   PRACTICAL.  139 

with  danger  to  matters  of  defined  faith, 
sanctioned  it  by  his  permission  and  full  ap- 
proval. 

But  there  is,  besides,  permanent  testi- 
mony to  the  freedom  of  scientific  pursuits 
within  her  fold,  in  the  programmes  of  her 
higher  educational  establishments  in  all 
parts  of  the  world.  These  programmes 
may  be  had  for  the  asking  anywhere,  and 
a  perusal  of  them  will  show  how  false  it  is 
to  say,  as  Mr.  Huxley  unfairly  said,  that 
this  church  is  always  opposed  to  the  study 
of  science. 

The  pursuit  of  science  in  itself  she  has 
never  opposed.  But  she  has  combated, 
and  must  always  combat  the  conclusions  of 
certain  scientists^  in  which  the  existence  of 
God  is  denied,  or  in  which  He  is  declared 
to  be  unknown  and  absolutely  unknowable, 
and  therefore  is  not  to  be  counted  or 
thought  of  at  all  in  human  affairs ;  in  which 
the  human  soul  and  man's  immortality  are 
also  counted  out,  and  in  which  all  revela- 
tion or  knowledge,  derived  from  Him  who 
created  us,  about  ourselves  and  the  meaning 
of  our  lives,  is  to  be  rejected  as  a  fraudulent 
and  absurd  invention  —  an  imposture  !  Yes, 
these  assertions  alleged  to  be  directly  de- 
rived from  science,  the  Church,  and  I  fancy 
the  saner  and  better  part  of  mankind,  will 
always  contest  and  refute,  maintaining  that 


140      THE    REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE. 

they  are  not  legitimate  conclusions  from 
true  and  demonstrated  science.  "Why  they 
are  persistently  asserted  by  men  of  name 
before  the  world,  is  a  secret  of  their  ov/n 
personal  and  private  lives  which  the  great 
accounting  day  will  manifest.  It  is  certain 
the  ''conclusions  of  Science"  favor  the 
freest  kind  of  living.  They  act  as  mutes 
on  the  strings  of  conscience. 

The  returning  agnostic  will  find,  too,  in 
the  teaching  and  practice  of  that  church, 
not  mere  dry  speculative  dogmatism  having 
reference  only  to  the  life  hereafter,  but 
much  that  is  valuable  in  its  practical  bear- 
ing on  the  actual  life  of  the  world,  much 
that  is  of  great  service  to  society,  curative 
of  its  ills  and  fenders  to  its  dangers. 

What  are  the  things  which  agitate  and 
alarm  society  at  the  present  day? 

1.  There  is  the  unrest  of  the  masses  of 
the  laboring  poor  — their  awakening  to  the 
consciousness  of  the  fact  thattliey  are  poor 
and  ill-provided  with  the  comforts  of  life, 
and  are  slave-driven  in  work  which  at  best 
is  precarious,  and  from  the  profits  of  which 
only  the  very  slenderest  share  comes  to 
them,  while  there  are  a  favored  few  into 
whose  hands  enormous  wealth  has  been 
gathered,  who  have  apparently  bought 
themselves  free  from  general  sentence  of 
toil,  who  live  in  extreme  comfort  and  luxury. 


IMPORTANT   AND   PRACTICAL.  141 

and  who  command  an  abounding  market  of 
needy  men  to  do  everything  for  them,  even 
to  the  mcreasing  of  their  already  great 
stores  of  riches.  This  glaring  inequality 
is  the  root  of  the  socialism,  so  universally 
discussed  in  our  times,  and  is  assuming 
such  threatening  attitudes  against  estab- 
lishing order  and  peace  almost  everywhere 
now. 

He  will  find  in  this  church  some  very 
practical  teachings  to  assuage  this  acute 
feeling,  and  mitigate  the  danger  of  its  vio- 
lent outbreak  —  if  listened  to. 

In  a  former  chapter  I  briefly,  but  truth- 
fully, described  numerous  societies  of  men 
and  women,  who  actually  exist  around  us 
and  have  existed  for  a  very  long  time,  where 
comradeship  and  harmony  prevail  with  per- 
fect equality  and  unity  of  purpose  for  a 
common  good  —  a  good  by  no  means  re- 
stricted to  self,  but  helpful  to  others,  and  a 
life,  not  ease-loving  and  indolent,  but  cease- 
lessly and  devotedly  active  in  the  cause  of 
ignorant,  needy  and  suffering  humanity. 
It  is  the  supernatural  motive  —  the  reflex 
from  the  eternal  life,  and  all  they  are  taught 
about  the  will,  the  justice  and  the  holiness 
of  the  Omnipotent,  which  alone  makes  the 
self-devotion,  the  self-immolation  of  such 
an  existence,  possible  in  this  world.  And 
it  is  the  same  motive  and  none   other,  ap- 


142      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGXOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

plied  of  course  in  a  lessened  degree  and 
modified  to  meet  the  circumstances  of 
worldly  occupations,  that  will  restrain  the 
poor  within  the  bounds  of  moderation 
in  their  just  efforts  to  better  their  con- 
dition, and  guide  them  securely  in  the  way 
of  happiness.  It  is  through  men's  minds 
the  world  is  best  governed  —  better  than  by 
the  ruder  means  of  force  and  terror,  and 
unless  it  is  ingrained  in  men  how  unwise  it 
is  to  give  all  their  thought  absorbingly  to  a 
life  so  passing  and  so  short,  and  practice  no 
virtue,  which  is  the  price  of  better  things 
in  the  more  enduring  one  —  in  other  words, 
admit  the  supernatural  into  their  thoughts 
and  daily  lives  —  in  vain  will  you  propose 
''nationalization  of  all  the  instruments  of 
production,"  '' unification  of  labor,"  and 
''equal  distribution  of  profits,"  "land 
tax"  or  "single  tax,"  Fourier's  "Pha- 
lansteries," Comte's  "Polity,"  or  any  of 
those  well-intentioned  schemes  for  social 
improvement,  of  which  the  last  forty  years 
have  been  so  prolific.  N^or  is  the  super- 
natural motive  a  nostrum,  with  which  to 
beguile  the  poor.  It  is  for  rich  and  poor 
alike.  The  supernatural  must  be  read- 
mitted into  the  lives  of  both  in  much  larger 
measure  than  it  is  at  present,  before  there 
is  the  slightest  chance  of  restoring  peace 
between  capital  and  labor.     It  is  quite  cer- 


IMPORTANT   AND   PRACTICAL.  143 

tain  that  these  benevolent  schemes  of  the 
Georges,  the  Marks,  and  the  Morrises  will 
never  succeed.  With  men,  as  they  are 
now,  they  are  unworkable.  That  the 
supernatural  no  longer  occupies  the  prom- 
inent place  it  ought  in  the  lives  of  multi- 
tudes of  men  in  our  time,  is  due  mainly  to 
the  wrangling  and  divisions  of  sects  since 
the  sixteenth  century.  So  the  first  step  in 
efforts  to  restore  it  would  be,  to  bring 
about  a  reunion  of  Christendom  under  one 
form  of  faith. 

But  this,  it  will  be  answered,  is  as 
Utopian  as  the  schemes  of  single  taxers 
and  nationalizers  "  of  land  and  instruments 
of  production."  I  do  not  entirely  admit 
that,  but  I  say  that  unless  some  approach 
to  it  is  made,  notwithstanding  the  impious 
sneers  of  a  reckless  minority,  you  may 
despair  of  a  settlement  of  the  social  ques- 
tion. Agitation  and  storm  and  fights  will 
come  —  violence  and  bloodshed  will  be  wit- 
nessed again,  but  when  their  short  season 
is  over,  things  will  fall  back  into  the  same 
if  not  a  worse,  state  again  —  the  future  but 
repeating  the  past.  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  in 
his  "  Social  Evolution  "  says  that  the 
"altruism,"  on  which  the  socialists  depend 
to  make  their  proposals  a  success,  is  not  to 
be  found  in  human  nature.  He  maintains 
that  "  the  altruism,  that  ever  did  anything 


144      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

or  ever  will  do  anything  among  men,  has 
been  generated  by  religion  and  religion 
alone." 

The  late  Professor  Blaikie,  whose  sym- 
pathies were  strongly  in  favor  of  a  moder- 
ate socialist  programme,  also  confesses  in 
one  of  his  essays  that  "  the  true  altruistic 
spirit,  necessary  for  the  success  of  social- 
ism, must  come  from  the  fountain  of  relig- 
ion, and  socialism  must  enter  into  closer 
alliance  with  rehgion."  It  is  a  pity  that 
many  will  have  to  ask — "Which?" 
Socialism  is  as  broad  as  humanity,  and  re- 
ligion ought  to  be  able  to  confront  it  as 
one,  and  with  no  faltering  and  uncertain 
doctrine.  This  latter  condition,  at  any 
rate,  our  returning  friend  will  find  well  ful- 
filled in  the  great  church  still  united  under 
Leo  XIII,  who,  by  the  way,  is  acknowl- 
edged iu  our  day  as  the  best  exponent  of 
socialism  m  its  highest  and  truest  sense. 

2.  Our  age  is  suffering,  and  in  some 
places  alarmingly  so,  from  a  deplorable 
change  in  women's  view  of  maternity. 

In  France  premiums  have  been  offered 
by  government  for  larger  families ! 

ISTot  long  since  a  prominent  New  York 
physician,  in  an  article  contributed  to  the 
North  American  Review^  raised  the  alarm 
for  America  on  this  delicate  but  most  im- 
portant subject.    He  declares  it  has  become 


IMPORTANT   AND   PRACTICAL.  145 

the  rule  with  American  wives,  either  not  to 
bear  children  at  all,  or  to  have  but  one  or 
two  at  most.  Among  the  causes  to  which 
he  attributes  this  dreadful  state  of  things, 
he  notes  "  the  loosening  of  religion's  hold 
on  American  parents."  They  no  longer 
regard  its  strict  prohibition  of  this  practice, 
and  have  taken  the  matter  into  their  own 
hands.  In  the  Catholic  Church  a  most 
succesful  remedy  is  applied  to  this.  The 
practice  and  obligation  there  enjoined  of 
the  regular  "  confession  of  sins,"  which  has 
come  in  for  such  aspersion  at  the  hands  of 
the  separatist  Christians,  but  which  is 
really  one  of  the  greatest  forces  for  moral 
good  in  the  world,  though  the  least  ob- 
trusive and  most  silent,  renders  such  deplor- 
able practices  impossible.  Every  Catholic 
woman  knows,  that  the  benefit  of  this 
sacrament  would  be  uncompromisingly 
denied,  until  all  such  sinful  tampering  with 
nature's  laws  was  completely  abandoned. 
And  their  faith  in  their  church's  teaching 
always  prevails. 

It  is  not  out  of  place  to  add  here  that  the 
prejudiced  attacks  on  "  the  confessional "  — 
happily  growing  less  in  this  more  reason- 
able age — have  no  foundation  in  fact. 
Here  is  a  simple  way  to  test  it.  You  may 
meet  everywhere  whole  families,  whose 
members    of  both    sexes    have    made  it  a 

10 


146      THE   REACTION   FROM    AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

lifelong  practice  ^^to  go  to  confession." 
Ask  any  of  them  collectively  or  individ- 
ually, if  any  harm  or  evil  has  come  to  them 
from  that  practice?  Their  answer  will  be, 
'']N^o."  Ask  them  if  they  ever  heard 
anything  in  that  confessional  that  was  not 
for  their  good?  You  may  rely  on  it  — 
their  answer  will  be,  "  Never."  The  thing 
stands  to  reason.  If  there  were  in  this 
practice  adopted  by  millions  of  people,  as 
a  part  of  their  lives  and  so  for  many 
hundreds  of  years,  anything  radically  or 
grossly  wrong,  it  would  have  become 
of  such  public  notoriety  long  ago,  that 
no  one  of  respectability  would  be  found  to 
follow  such  a  practice;  but  as  many 
follow  it  as  ever  —  many  most  excellent 
people,  you  will  find,  if  you  only  take 
the  trouble  to  inquire,  which  proves  that 
a  most  unjust  prejudice  has  been  propa- 
gated against  it. 

3.  Our  age  is  suffering  from  a  loss  of 
respect  for  the  sacredness  of  the  marriage 
bond.  Facility  of  divorce,  which  now 
nearly  everywhere  prevails  under  the  un- 
righteous usurpation  of  the  civil  power  in 
the  domain  of  an  institution  directly 
established  and  safeguarded  by  God  Him- 
self, has  resulted  in  sad  consequences  to 
society.  It  is  not  unusual  for  a  woman 
to  meet  at    social    gatherings   two,    three 


IMPORTANT   AND   PRACTICAL.  147 

and  even  four  men  to  whom  she  had  been 
severally  married !  The  disruption  of 
families  follows  —  so  many  foundations  of 
civilized  society  uprooted.  Children  are 
robbed  of  their  homes,  and  neglected. 
The  filial  feeling,  hitherto  so  wholesome 
and  sweet  an  influence  in  life,  is  blighted 
and  ruined  by  a  precocious  knowledge  of 
the  disgraceful  frailties  of  parents. 

The  most  repulsive  feature  in  this  author- 
ized license  of  manners,  is  that  the  divorce 
courts  offer  a  premium  and  an  invitation 
to  vice,  for  almost  immediately  the  "re- 
spondent and  co-respondent"  get  married. 
These  shameless  people  often  unblushingly 
own  that  their  infidelities  have  been  com- 
mitted so  that  the  divorce  court  may  have 
evidence  to  set  them  free  to  indulge  their 
unnatural  and  illicit  amours.  And  the 
court  obediently  enters  into  their  plot. 

Against  this  manifest  drifting  into  pagan 
barbarism,  the  ancient  Church  stands  firm. 
It  proclaims  to  the  world,  that  marriage  is 
not  a  thing  to  be  tampered  with  by  any  hu- 
man authority  whatsoever.  "  Whom  God 
has  joined  together  let  no  man  put  asun- 
der," is  her  charter  on  this.  The  yoke 
which  has  been  deliberately  and  validly  as- 
sumed—  it  is  God's  will,  she  declares  — 
must  be  borne  to  the  end.  The  marriage 
bond  is  sacred  —  made  by    God    Himself, 


148      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

and  given  into  the  keeping  only  of  those 
who  represent  Him.  No  marriages,  she 
says,  done  in  slipshod  fashion  over  the  coun- 
ter of  registry  offices  shall  be  blessed  by 
her.  N^o  halting,  conditioned  form  of  mar- 
riage on  which  rests  the  gloomy  shadow  of 
a  prospective  divorce,  and  takes  away  from 
the  yonng  people  that  security  of  "  settling 
in  life  "  they  so  eagerly  looked  forward  to, 
is  permitted  by  her  —  it  must  be  "  for  bet- 
ter, for  worse  till  death  do  us  part."  And 
if  in  a  minority  of  cases  the  yoke  hope- 
lessly chafes,  and  the  couple  prove  ill- 
suited  to  each  other,  she  meets  that  with 
the  legal  separation  from  "  bed  and  board," 
but  insists,  that  for  the  commoJi  good,  the 
inconvenience  of  celibacy  must  be  borne 
until  the  death  of  one  shall  set  the  other 
free. 

4.  Our  age  suffers  from  a  lack  of  hon- 
esty in  public  and  private  life.  People  are 
beginning  to  be  puzzled  to  know,  what  to 
do  with  their  money,  which  prudent  thrift 
rightly  dictates  to  them  to  put  by  for  "  the 
rainy  day."  The  exposure  of  gigantic 
swindles  like  that  of  J.  Balfour,  ex-M.  P., 
&c.,  the  wholesale  plunder  of  the  Panama 
stockholders,  the  "  booming  "  of  worthless 
or  fictitious  properties  and  stocks  as  invest- 
ments, awaken  the  world,  from  time  to 
time,  to   the  fact  that  multitudes  of  men 


IMPORTANT  AND  PRACTICAL.       149 

have  lost  all  conscience  about  stealing  the 
money  of  others.  The  expensive  excite- 
ment of  ''turf"  and  ''ring"  gambling 
has  created  a  passion  for  petty  pilfering 
which  leaves  no  employer  safe.  The  sys- 
tem of  electing  office  holders  and  judges 
only  for  a  short  period,  has  opened  the 
door  to  corruption  and  dishonest  jobbery 
of  all  kinds,  where  that  system  prevails, 
until  people  get  little  value  for  their  taxes 
and  can  scarcely  get  justice  fairly  admin- 
istered. 

To  this  serious  and  dangerous  wrongdo- 
ing, the  Church  firmly  opposes  the  "  re- 
fusal of  absolution  in  confession  "  to  the 
thief  and  cheat,  no  matter  of  what  rank  or 
position,  until  restitution  be  made  to  those 
who  were  wronged,  and  until  robbery  in 
every  form  be  abandoned.  The  world  little 
knows  the  powerful  help  it  lost  in  its 
affairs,  when  the  separating  Christians 
of  the  sixteenth  century  decreed  to  dis- 
continue the  practice  of  confessing  their 
sins. 

5.  Our  age  is  suffering  from  a  loss  of 
what  may  be  called,  for  want  of  a  less  awk- 
ward word,  femininity  in  women.  An  am- 
bitious spirit  has  entered  into  them.  They 
are  hungering  for  a  share  in  all  public 
affairs,  and  aim  at  abolishing  all  distinc- 
tions of  sex  in  the  avocations  of  life.     Why 


150      THE    REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

may  not  we  do  everything  that  men  do? 
they  say.  And  they  proceed  to  do  it  — 
never  reckoning  how  much  of  their  charm 
they  shed  with  their  skirts.  They  stop  not 
even  at  skimming  the  highways  and  dash- 
ing through  our  streets,  in  that  new  and 
least  modest  of  postures  —  astride  of  a 
bicycle. 

Well,  the  Church  has  nothing  de  fide  on 
the  manners  of  women,  but  she  has  plenty 
to  restrain  their  excesses  in  the  wise  tradi- 
tions from  which  she  does  not  intend  to  de- 
part, and  in  the  golden  rules  for  women's 
conduct  which  she  has  by  no  means  abro- 
gated. She  has  quiet,  but  sufficient,  means 
to  see  to  it  that  her  children,  who  are  styled 
in  her  liturgy  the  devotus  femineus  sexus, 
shall  not  make  themselves  —  instead  of 
helpful  examples  in  modest  reserve  — 
wanton  occasions  of  spiritual  hurt 
to  men.  Women  owe  their  present 
high  place  in  civilization,  as  well  as 
their  rescue  from  a  barbarous  degra- 
dation in  past  times,  exclusively  to  the 
action  of  this  ancient  Church.  They 
should,  not  ungratefully,  remember  that. 
If  they  choose  to  forget  it,  and  despise  her 
counsels,  so  wise  from  long  experience,  it 
is  certain  they  will  fall  back  into  the  same 
cruel  subjection  again.  Let  them  turn 
their  eyes  to  the  Orient  1     Who   of  them 


IMPORTANT  AND  PRACTICAL.        151 

would  be  Moslem  women  or  Hindoos? 
Well,  to  that,  the  half-unsexed  woman  of 
to-day  is  inevitably  hastening  her  sisters  of 
the  future ! 

Thus  our  friend  will  find  that  the 
practices  and  teachings  of  this  oldest  Chris- 
tian church,  are  by  no  means  all  dry  mysti- 
cism or  valueless  speculation.  All  the  other 
way.  There  is  hardly  a  detail  of  human 
life  on  which  they  have  not  a  direct  and 
beneficent  bearing,  and  undoubtedly  make 
for  the  true  civilization  and  happiness  of 
the  race. 

A  signal  service  was  rendered  to  the 
Christian  world  when  the  Council  of  Trent, 
amid  the  mental  confusion  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  issued  a  clear  and  unhesitating  re- 
statement of  the  whole  Catholic  creed. 
The  straying  agnostic  would  do  well  to 
refer  to  that  settled  standard  of  faith  for 
further  details.  Many  editions  of  it  have 
been  published  in  the  Latin  tongue  as  well 
as  in  translations,  and  may  be  procured 
from  any  Catholic  publishing  house. 
True,  since  that  time  two  points  of  doctrine 
have  been  defined  —  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary  and  the 
Infallibility  of  the  Pope  quoad  fidem  et 
mores.  But  defining  does  not  mean  in- 
venting. It  does  not  mean  that  those 
points  were  not  hitherto  believed.     On  the 


152      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

contrary,  it  is  an  affirmation  that  they 
were  always  accepted  as  true  by  the  Church 
generally,  but  that  no  pressing  need  of 
formulating  them  as  beyond  all  dispute, 
that  is,  defining  them,  having  arisen,  they 
were  not,  hitherto,  incorporated  in  set 
terms,  among  the  articles  of  faith. 


Chapter    XI. 

Present  Day  Dangers  to  Believers, 

There  never  was  a  time  when  '^  the  just 
man  living  by  faith  "  was  more  exposed  to 
disturbing  influences  than  he  is  at  present. 

1.  Magazines  and  Reviews  have  multi- 
plied to  an  enormous  extent.  They  are  not 
what  they  used  to  be.  They  have  no  par- 
ticular views,  no  principles,  take  no  sides, 
and  represent  no  party.  They  open  their 
pages  impartially  to  error  and  to  truth 
alike.  They  are  open  debating  ground, 
from  which  no  subject  is  excluded,  where 
nothing  is  sacred  any  longer,  nothing 
exempt  from  the  most  searching  and  ad- 
venturous criticism.  Side  by  side  with  an 
interesting  account  of  travel  or  some  ques- 
tion of  politics,  you  have  a  fierce  onslaught 
on  the  Bible,  on  some  particular  point  of  be- 


PRESENT   DAY    DANGERS    TO    BELIEVERS.       153 

lief  or  religious  practice.  To  take  a  hap- 
hazard instance  look  at  the  North  Amer- 
ican Review  for  December,  1895,  where 
Prof.  Goodwin  Smith  disports  his  Yoltaire- 
anism.  Look  at  almost  any  number  of 
the  London  Nineteenth  Century^  or  of  the 
Fortnightly  Beview^  the  same  medley  of 
confusing  views  on  every  aspect  of  relig- 
ion and  the  supernatural  may  be  encoun- 
tered. This  species  of  literature  has  a 
very  wide  circulation  and  makes  favorite 
short  reading  for  hosts  of  men  who  are 
too  busy  to  study  things  au  fond  or  read 
whole  books.  There  is  little  doubt  that 
this  literature  is  accountable  for  much  of 
the  unbelief  and  of  the  unsettled  belief,' 
that  prevails. 

It  is,  then,  a  danger  to  the  believer. 

But  what  is  to  be  done  about  it? 

It  is  hopeless  to  expect,  that  the  un- 
restrained liberty  of  the  press  in  this  par- 
ticular will  be  interfered  with.  N^o 
government  cares  any  longer  to  intervene 
in  favor  of  religious  belief.  As  govern- 
ments they  ignore  the  fact,  that  God  has 
rights  over  the  minds  of  his  creatures. 

It  only  remains  then  for  individuals,  who 
do  care  for  faith,  to  refuse  to  aid  and 
abet  such  publications  until  their  editors 
and  publishers  show  more  solicitude  to  safe- 
guard religious  belief. 


154      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

"  Oh,  what  narrow-minded  advice  !  Peo- 
ple ought  to  know  all  sides  of  questions ;  it 
is  unfair  and  cowardly  not  to  listen  to  what 
every  one  has  to  say."  To  this  remon- 
strance, which  will  at  once  be  made  in 
many  quarters,  the  Catholic  believer  at  least, 
can  most  reasonably  answer,  that  he  does 
not  choose  to  employ  himself  so  idly  as 
reading  denials  and  contradictions  of  mat- 
ters that,  for  him,  were  settled  ages  ago  by 
expert  authority,  which  he  deeply  respects, 
and  on  which  he  has  long  since  made  up  his 
mind,  that  it  is  safer  and  wiser  for  him  to 
rely.  It  is  not  cowardly  —  it  is  common 
sense  and  prudence  not  to  listen  to  people, 
who  only  succeed  in  upsetting  the  mind  on 
subjects  which  he  deems  very  vital  to  his 
happiness,  and  who  have  nothing  at  all  to 
offer  in  place  of  the  hope  they  deprive 
him  of,  and  leave  him  only  in  bewilderment. 
It  is  not  unfair  in  him  to  demand,  at  least, the 
liberty  of  not  listening  to  very  bad  and  very 
unpractical  advice.  Take  for  instance 
Goodwin  Smith's  article  above  referred  to. 
He  seeks  to  undermine  all  respect  for  the 
Bible,  and  flatly  denies  it  to  represent  God's 
instructions  or  the  expression  of  His  will  to 
His  creatures.  Well,  what  are  we  to 
accept  in  place  of  it?  Mr.  Smith's 
instructions  to  the  world?  Hardly  I 
For    hundreds     of     years     this     question 


PRESENT   DAY   DANGERS    TO    BELIEVERS.       155 

was  deliberated  upon,  again  and  again, 
by  intelligent,  educated  men,  men  of  cul- 
tivated intellect,  of  different  nationalities 
and  different  times,  and  they  all  have  de- 
livered a  unanimous  verdict  in  favor  of  this 
most  ancient  and  venerated  of  books.  That 
ought  to  be  enough  for  any  ordinary  man, 
and  the  believing  Catholic  knows  that  it  is 
enough  for  him.  ]^or  does  he  feel  he  is 
surrendering  his  reason  or  his  judgment  in 
any  way.  He  rather  feels  that  he  is  vindi- 
cating his  common  sense  and  acting  as  all 
sensible  men  do  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of 
life.  There  are  legislative  bodies  and  Su- 
preme Courts  of  law  everywhere.  No 
reasonable  citizen  ever  thinks  he  is  surren- 
dering his  reason  or  judgment  in  accepting 
their  decisions,  and  on  occasion  he  is  willing 
even  to  surrender  his  own  private  judgment, 
as  the  wisest  and  safest  thing  for  him  to  do. 
If  any  one  button-holes  him  and  lays  out 
arguments  to  prove  to  him  that  he  should 
not  do  so,  he  says :  "  That  is  foolish  talk," 
and  he  does  not  listen.  Every  sensible  man 
applauds  him  for  that.  On  subjects  that 
to  him  are  of  much  higher  importance  than 
State  laws,  why  refuse  to  the  believer  the 
same  approval  that  the  citizen  is  sure  to  get 
for  acting  so  sensibly? 

Or  take  Mr.  Huxley's  assertive  articles 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,     Why  should 


156      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

the  believer  waste  time  in  reading  what 
hundreds  of  men,  whom  he  knows  better 
and  respects  more  than  Mr.  Huxley,  have 
told  the  world  long  ago  were  matters  fixed 
and  decided  on  as  of  faith,  and  founded  on 
divine  authority?  All  the  Huxleys  in  the 
world  could  not  change  his  opinion  now, 
and  even  if  they  could  they  have  nothing 
to  offer  on  which  he  could  rest  for  courage 
and  hope  as  he  rests  on  his  present  belief. 

Therefore  the  best  and  only  thing  to  do 
is  to  leave  those  men  and  dangerous  literary 
symposiums  severely  alone.  When  you  are 
walking  out  peacefully  with  a  sound  head 
and  whole  skin,  and  rocks  are  flying  about, 
you  do  not  go  deliberately  in  the  way  of 
them.  "But,"  it  will  be  answered  again, 
"  Cardinals  Manning  and  Newman  and  Gib- 
bons contrbuted  to  the  pages  of  these 
magazines." 

That  these  distinguished  men  felt  impelled 
to  reply  to  outrageous  attacks  on  revelation 
wherever  opportunity  afforded,  is  by  no 
means  a  formal  approval  of  the  methods 
adopted  by  the  publishers  of  those  new  ec- 
lectic periodicals.  Probably  they  were  glad 
of  the  chance  to  turn  an  evil,  they  could 
not  abolish,  into  a  vehicle  for  at  least  some 
good.  Moreover  there  is  no  need  to  have 
recourse  to  these  monthly  papers  to  find 
out  what  these   eminent  churchmen   have 


PKESENT   DAY   DANGERS   TO    BELIEVERS.       157 

to  say ;  that  may  be  found,  in  better  and 
fuller  form,  in  their  own  published  works. 

2.  Free  Public  Libraries  are  another 
danger.  They  are  everywhere  the  rage  in 
our  days.  Though  free  they  are  in  another 
sense  compulsory.  People  are  compelled 
to  pay  for  them  in  taxes,  if  private  munifi- 
cence has  not  stepped  in  to  build  and  endow 
them.  In  another  sense  too  they  are  really 
free  —  very  free  indeed.  There  is  no  cen- 
sorship for  any  kind  of  book,  except  the 
openly  obscene.  The  shelves  of  those 
libraries  are  as  impartially  open  to  irrelig- 
ious falsehood,  attacks  on  faith  and  the 
supernatural,  and  to  religious  truth,  as  the 
pages  of  the  new  symposium  journals. 

These  library  buildings,  all  handsome, 
substantial  structures  on  which  public 
money  is  unstintedly  lavished,  are  said  to 
have  many  advantages.  They  are  nice  cozy 
shelters  for  the  poor  and  unemployed.  No 
one  will  grudge  them  for  that  purpose, 
though  no  doubt  something  less  pretentious 
would  do  in  most  places. 

They  keep  the  working  classes  out  of  sa- 
loons and  gambling  places.  This  is  a 
matter  of  statistics  that  I  am  not  competent 
to  deal  with,  but  if  they  do  —  and  do  them 
no  worse  harm,  supply  no  poison  for  their 
souls  —  all  right. 

They  are  a  great  help  to  the  poor  scholar 


158      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC    SCIENCE, 

and  intelligent  mechanic  where  books  be- 
yond their  slender  purses  may  be  consulted — 
excellent.  The  best  and  newest  literature, 
history,  travels,  fiction,  etc.,  is  there  within 
easy  reach  of  all  who  cannot  have  home 
libraries  and  who,  out  of  w^orking  hours, 
are  fond  of  reading  and  self -improvement  — 
admirable  too,  only  it  must  here  be  added 
that  from  universal  experience  the  heaviest 
demand  is  always  on  the  fiction  department, 
especially  by  the  youthful  of  both  sexes,  so 
the  "  self-improvement "  is  of  a  shady  and 
doubtful  kind. 

They  add  to  the  culture  and  refinement, 
lessen  ignorance  and  keep  up  education 
among  the  people.  The  experiment  is  too 
new,  to  pronounce  yet  with  confidence,  on 
these  happy  effects.  It  should  be  the  wish 
of  every  one  that  they  may  do  so.  But  it  is 
just  possible  that  just  such  miscellaneous 
reading  may  have  a  lowering  effect  on 
morality.  And  what  will  compensate  a 
nation  for  that  calamity? 

Further  than  that,  and  a  greater  calamity 
is  it  to  leave  a  people  without  any  religious 
faith  whatever.  This  is  the  recorded  con- 
viction of  the  wisest  men  in  every  genera- 
tion. And  beyond  all  doubt  these  free 
Public  Libraries  in  one  respect  contribute 
to  this  danger.  In  nearly  every  one  of 
them,  on  demand,  you  can  obtain    any  of 


PRESENT  DAY  DANGERS   TO  BELIEVERS.       159 

the  books  that  contain  the  most  virulent 
attacks  upon  religious  belief  for  the  last 
hundred  years. 

And  what  is  to  be  done? 

We  can  not  send  Samsons  through  the 
world  to  pull  them  down.  We  do  not  boy- 
cott them  like  the  symposium  magazines  — 
we  should  be  summoned  for  taxes  all  the 
same. 

There  remains  only  reform.  Every 
rate-payer,  with  a  conscience  for  his  coun- 
try, should  agitate  for  a  stricter  censorship 
over  all  books  of  a  dangerous  tendency, 
and  the  appointment  of  competent  and  up- 
right censors.  As  no  discrimination  is  to 
be  hoped  for  in  favor  of  any  particular 
theological  works,  owing  to  the  unhappy 
confusion  introduced  by  the  sects,  elim- 
inate that  department  altogether  from  the 
public  libraries  —  allow  no  books  of  any 
kind  treating  of  religion.  That  is  about 
the  best  that  can  be  done,  and  any  body  of 
united  rate-payers  could  easily  insist  on  it. 

3.  Legislators  declare  that  this  had  to  be 
done  in  the  Public  School  system.  The 
multitude  of  contending  sects,  they  said, 
left  them  no  choice,  but  to  drop  religion 
altogether  from  public  education.  This 
may  be  a  good  argument  to  make  use  of 
for  purifying  the  Public  Libraries,  where 
the  omission  can  do  no  harm. 


160      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

But  unfortunately  such  action,  as  applied 
to  daily  training  of  young  children,  consti- 
tutes the  greatest  of  all  dangers  to  the  re- 
ligious faith  of  a  country,  and,  as  experi- 
ence is  every  day  abundantly  proving,  is 
accountable  for  the  vast  amount  of  religious 
indifference  among  the  adult  population, 
w^herever  that  system  prevails. 

It  is  a  fallacy  to  say,  that  dropping  all 
religion  out  of  education  v^as  the  only 
choice  left  to  settle  the  question.  There 
is  more  than  one  way  of  settling  it. 

If  the  body  of  men  in  charge  of  state 
affairs  deem  it,  in  their  might,  incumbent 
upon  them  to  prescribe  what  kind  of  edu- 
cation the  people's  children  shall  receive  — 
a  right  which  is  by  no  means  incontestable 
—  then,  rather  than  close  the  school-room 
door  upon  all  religion,  they  should  have 
first  tried,  if  they  themselves  still  retain 
any  due  reverence  for  God's  rights,  less 
sweeping  and  less  perilous  measures. 

The  people  are  divided  into  two  classes. 
One  maintains  that  religion  forms  a  part, 
and  the  most  important  part,  of  education. 
The  other  says  it  does  not.  Meanwhile  the 
State,  assuming  the  duty  of  educating  the 
nation,  levies  taxes  for  the  purpose  from  all, 
and  yet  positively  refuses  to  have  anything 
to  say  to  religion.  In  the  eyes  of  the  first 
class,  and  they  are  no  inconsiderable  num- 


PRESENT   DAY  DANGERS  TO  BELIEVERS.       161 

ber,  as  the  State  fails  in  an  essential  part  of 
its  duty,  they  question  the  justice  of  the  tax. 
But  as  they  can  not  resist  the  might  of  the 
State,  they  obey  the  law  under  protest,  and 
peacefully  suggest  another  way  out  of  the 
difficulty.  They  say,  Remit  us  our  pro- 
portion of  this  public  tax,  which  we  promise 
to  apply  to  the  education,  that  includes 
religious  training  for  our  children.  That 
seems  perfectly  fair  and  just. 

Legislators  reply  that  this  would  be  cum- 
brous and  troublesome.  Yes,  but  if  it  is 
fair  and  just  and  right,  is  it  not  worth  the 
trouble?  Does  it  riot  make  the  trouble  a 
duty  to  that  class  of  citizens? 

They  also  make  answer,  that  it  would 
breed  divisions  in  the  country  to  the  danger 
of  the  State.  The  advocates  of  religious 
training  meet  this  with  denial.  They  pro- 
test their  loyalty  to  the  Constitution,  and 
offer  any  guarantee  the  State  may  see  fit  to 
exact,  in  the  way  of  inspection  of  their 
schools  and  vigilance  over  their  methods,  in 
proof  of  their  good  faith. 

It  is  objected,  in  the  third  place,  that  it 
would  break  up  uniformity  in  the  standard 
of  national  education,  which  everybody 
admits  ought  to  be  maintained. 

Well,  so  do  the  religious  educators  admit 
it,  and  profess  themselves  ready  to  adopt 
the  State  standard  in  all  secular  branches, 

n 


162      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

where  they  do  not  clash  with  their  religious 
views,  which  is  only  likely  to  happen  in  the 
subject  of  history  —  and  they  are  moreover 
willing  that  the  efficiency  of  their  schools 
should  be  tested  by  State  educational  ex- 
perts. 

Could  any  demand  be  more  manifestly 
fair  than  theirs,  surrounded  by  such  safe- 
guards? >*• 

Why  is  it  not  granted  then? 

Because  there  is  another  large  class,  who 
want  to  fling  over  all  religion,  and  who 
know  that  the  present  system  admirably 
helps  their  desires.  This  is  a  proof  of  the 
danger  to  all  belief,  which  results  from  these 
schools. 

And  (2)  there  is  another  equally  large 
class  whom,  unhappily,  sectarian  jealousy, 
and  long- cherished  animosity  to  another 
section  of  their  fellow-citizens,  place  in 
opposition  to  everything  desired  by  them  — 
"  We  will  not  listen  to  any  demand  you 
make  or  any  plea  you^nt  forth,"  they  say ; 
"  we  suspect  and  distrust  you."  Shame  I 
And  this  is  a  country  which  boasts  of  per- 
fect freedom  and  toleration  !  In  face  of 
such  opposition,  it  can  only  be  hoped,  that 
time  will  bring  a  more  enlightened  and 
kinder  feeling.  Meanwhile  it  rests  upon 
those,  who  care  for  the  preservation  of 
religious  faith,  to  do  their  part  as  citizens 


PRESENT  DAY  DANGERS   TO   BELIEVERS.       163 

to  remove  prejudice.  This  prejudice  rests 
on  the  hollo  west  of  cries,  yet  one  that 
always  gains  the  people's  ear  and  excites 
their,  alarm.  "Whenever  the  demand  is 
heard  for  sanction  and  aid  to  schools  with 
religious  training  in  their  programme,  the 
cry  is  raised,  "  Our  great  national  school 
system  is  in  danger !  "  It  rings  through 
the  land  and  at  once  rallies  multitudes  of 
people  in  opposition,  who  never  thought 
about  the  question,  who  do  not  even  under- 
stand what  the  danger  may  be,  or  how,  or 
whence  it  is  to  come. 

It  will  be  a  duty  to  say,  and  to  show,  to 
such  people  that  the  national  school  system 
is  not  in  danger,  that  this  cry  is  as  false  as 
it  is  captious,  that  the  real  danger  is  loss  of 
a  people's  religious  faith,  and  the  forfeit  to 
the  nation's  detriment,  of  the  greatest 
moral  force  for  order  and  right  conduct 
in  this  world. 

"  The  home  and  the  church,"  it  is  said 
again,  "  are  the  places  for  religious  training, 
they  are  sufficient  to  avert  this  danger." 

'No  doubt  the  home  and  the  church  bear 
their  share  of  good  influence  upon  the 
child,  but  experience  shows  that  this  in- 
fluence does  not  reach  far  enough,  and  as 
often  as  not  is  more  than  outweighed  by 
the  loose  example  which  the  child  witnesses 
in  the  religionless  school.     The  child  ought 


164      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

to  be  habituated  to  a  reverence  for  re- 
ligion, and  impressed  with  its  great  impor- 
tance in  this  life  and  for  the  next.  But  how 
expect  the  child  to  deem  that  important, 
about  which  he  never  hears  his  teachers 
say  one  word  on  any  of  the  six  days  of  his 
weekly  school-life?  And  if  anything  is 
ever  said  about  it,  it  is,  more  often  than  not, 
a  sneer  from  an  agnostic  teacher,  or  a 
mockery  of  it  in  the  mouths  of  his  com- 
panions. No,  it  must  be  taken  as  generally 
true,  that  unless  religious  ideas  are  inter- 
woven with  the  chief  occupation  of  the 
child's  daily  hfe,  he  will  value  them  very 
little  in  his  riper  years.  If  religion  is  true, 
it  is  a  crime,  to  contribute  to  such  a  result. 

It  is  not,  then,  unfair  to  assert,  that  one 
of  the  greatest  dangers  to  religious  belief 
in  our  times  is  the  system  of  purely  worldly 
education,  imposed  on  so  many  countries 
to-day,  in  spite  of  the  unceasing  protest  of 
the  oldest  church  in  the  world  and  the  two 
hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  its  members. 

4.  Another,  and  no  slight  danger,  is  the 
extreme  worldliness  and  luxurious  living  of 
the  rich.  Think  of  the  vast  sums  expended 
on  their  purely  selfish  tastes  and  pursuits. 
Take  a  peep  into  those  splendid  and  costly 
club-houses  —  the  30ft  lounge  of  the  Syba- 
rite and  Epicurean.  Think  of  the  floating- 
palace  pleasure  yachts,  the  gorgeous   villas 


PRESENT   DAY  DANGERS  TO   BELIEVERS.       165 

at  the  summer  resorts,  the  brilliant  equip- 
ages and  the  dazzling  toilettes,  male  and 
female.  We  shudder  at  the  polygamous 
Turk,  and  the  unbridled  animalism  of  the 
Oriental,  but  who  keeps  up  those  hundreds 
of  costly  and  nameless  establishments  of 
licentiousness  in  every  Christian  city? 
Place  side  by  side  in  your  thoughts,  what 
you  have  learned  of  Christianity  and  its 
counsels,  and  say  what  could  possibly  be 
in  common  between  the  one  picture  and 
the  other?  The  luxury-loving  rich  are  of 
the  "  eat,  drink,  to-morrow  we  die  "  class, 
and  their  example,  like  a  contagion,  spreads 
down  through  the  ranks  of  the  less  favored 
of  fortune  in  a  reduced  degree.  Until  these 
people  wake  up  to  the  dread  reality,  that 
here  is  not  the  place  of  final  satisfaction 
and  final  reward,  that  it  is  a  species  of  most 
reckless  gambling  to  stake  all  on  their  few 
years  of  present  life,  faith  can  find  no  place 
among  them  or  give  anything  to  hope  for. 
5.  Fiction,  which  is  turned  out  by  the  ton 
to  amuse  the  leisure  hour,  is  another  danger. 
What  does  the  best  of  it  parade  across  its 
stage  as  representative  of  human  society? 
Why,  a  thronging  crowd  of  unadulterated 
heathens.  Even  in  the  exquisitely  refined 
and  delicate  stories  of  Miss  Jane  Austen, 
whom  Lord  Macaulay  so  highly  praised,  and 
in  the  admittedly  clean  novels  of  such  masters 


166      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

as  Thackeray  and  Dickens,*  you  would  never 
for  a  moment  be  reminded,  that  you  were 
reading  about  the  mhabitants  of  a  world, 
once  visited  by  a  Divine  Teacher,  and  a 
Divine  Redeemer.  Say  what  people  may, 
all  this  cannot  help  having  the  effect  of 
slowly  lulling  the  constant  reader  into  an 
unholy  and  unsafe  forgetfulness,  and  form- 
ing the  fascinated  reader  into  the  mould 
and  stamp  of  his  favorite  hero  and  hero- 
ine —  ' '  These  people  seem  to  have  got  on 
famously  without  much  ado  about  religion, 
why  not  I?  "  —  he  is  apt  to  say. 

The  returning  agnostic  must  not  fail  to 
take  account  of  these  five  dangers,  and 
healthily  exercise  his  faith  in  not  only  avoid- 
ing, but  doing  battle  against  their  deadly 
tendencies. 

In  the  following  brief  chapter,  I  offer  a 
few  hints  to  smooth  the  way  for  some 
minds,  whom  the  many  mysteries  of  faith 
hinder  and  perplex  —  without  reason  as  will 
be  seen. 


*  Just  "to  save  his  face,"  as  the  Chinese  say,  Dickens 
has  a  few,  very  few,  allusions  to  *'  The  Master  who  was 
gentle  and  forgiving,"  etc. 


MYSTERIES.  167 

Chapter     XII. 
Mysteries. 

We  have  to  swallow  a  lot  of  "  camels ' ' 
in  this  world  around  us,  why  hesitate  about 
a  few  moreV 

From  where  I  am  now  sitting  I  can  see, 
in  a  bee  line,  the  great  Lick  observatory — 
sixteen  atmospheric  miles  away ;  it  is  thirty- 
two  by  the  road.  It  looks  just  like  a  coach 
and  six  on  the  summit  of  the  range.  Yet 
I  know  that  under  that  little  white  dome, 
there  is  the  largest  telescope  yet  mounted 
in  the  world ;  and  there  are  sidereal  teles- 
copes, elaborate  photographic  instruments, 
quadrants,  sextants,  true  meridians  —  what 
not?  There  is  a  trained  staff  of  observers 
and  distinguished  mathematicians,  who  live 
up  there  in  six  months  of  cloud  and  snow, 
five  thousand  feet  above  the  heads,  and 
away  from  the  converse  of  their  fellows,  to 
discover  for  us  the  secrets  of  the  stars.  It 
cost  nearly  a  million  dollars  to  install  that 
small  establishment.  And  how  little,  how 
very  little,  they  have  been  able  to  tell 
us;  and  without  at  all  depreciating  their 
great  devotedness  and  industry  —  how  use- 
less in  the  practical  affairs  of  men  has  even 
that  little  proved  to  be  !     They  have  given 


168      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

US  a  few  pictures.  »But  as  well  photograph 
a  '^  Fruit-vale"  orange  or  a  squash-melon, 
for  all  those  pictures  tell,  in  reality,  of 
Mars  or  the  moon.  It  was  up  there  they 
discovered  the  fifth  moon  of  Jupiter,  a  fact 
which  Professor  Ball  informed  his  readers, 
in  the  London  JSlews,  was  of  ''vast  im- 
portance." In  the  hard  realities  of  life 
and  its  personal  concerns,  what  is  it  to  me 
whether  Jupiter  has  five  moons  or  fifty? 
They  make  stupendous  calculations  about 
the  distances,  the  gravity  and  motions  of 
planets,  stars,  double  stars,  comets  and 
nebulae.  Curious  no  doubt,  but  they  are 
still  gazing  into  mystery,  and  are  as  far 
from  solving  the  familiar  riddles  close 
around  them  as  ever.  They  have  made 
great  advances  in  knowledge  of  the  sun. 
But  who  will  tell  us  what  heat  really  is,  and 
why  it  acts  so  peculiarly?  That  sun  is  one 
million  times  the  bulk  of  our  earth ;  it  is 
ninety-three  millions  of  miles  distant  —  very 
well.  The  flood  of  heat,  cast  out  by  a  bulk 
like  that,  ought  to  entirely  envelope  and 
keep  in  equal  warmth  all  parts  of  a  small 
globe  like  the  earth.  So  one  would  fancy. 
But  ask  Dr.  Nansen  to  tell  you  what  he 
saw  and  felt  last  year  at  the  North  Pole. 
'No  obliquity  of  the  earth's  axis  can  en- 
tirely satisfy  one,  as  an  explanation  of  that. 
But  here  is  the  real  mystery  of  heat.     It 


MYSTERIES.  169 

travels  all  the  ninety-three  millions  of  miles 
to  come  to  us  —  and  for  all  that  distance 
up  to  within  a  few  feet  it  is  cold,  icy  cold  — 
proof ;  rise  up  straight  into  that  sunshine 
in  a  balloon ;  in  an  hour  or  two  you  will  be 
a  frost-bitten  corpse,  the  same  sun  still 
shining  on  you !  Yet,  what  enormous 
initial  heat  must  have  been  projected  to 
warm  that  little  bed  out  therein  the  garden, 
and  make  those  spring  flowers  look  so  gay 
this  morning !  Last  week  Professor  Holden 
and  his  friends  up  at  the  ''  Lick"  had  sev- 
eral feet  of  snow  all  round  them,  while  we 
were  sitting  in  shirt  sleeves  and  wearing 
sunhats  from  the  heat  down  here !  The 
illustration  of  the  glass  of  a  hot-house 
usually  offered  in  explanation  of  this, 
solves  not,  for  me,  the  mystery  why  a  thing 
that  was  icy  cold  becomes  blazing  hot  by 
mere  contact  with  the  atmosphere,  or  by 
coming  under  it,  so  to  speak.  Yet  you  be- 
lieve in  heat.  It  is  a  thing  that  will  blister 
you,  if  you  do  not  believe  in  it.  You,  at 
the  same  time,  really  know  nothing  at  all 
about  the  thing  itself. 

Up  at  that  "Lick,"  they  will  tell  you 
the  weight  of  this  great  earth  —  enor- 
mous —  the  figures  in  pounds  would  reach 
from  here  to  there.  Yet  this  tremendous 
bulk  is  floating  about  in,  apparently, 
nothing!     When  we  lie   down   upon  it  at 


170      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

night,  or  step  abroad  upon  it  in  the  day, 
how  do  we  know  it  will  not  give  way  under 
us  and  leave  us  there?  We  do  not  know 
at  all,  because  everybody  will  tell  you,  if 
they  are  straight  and  honest,  that  au  fond 
it  is  a  mystery  to  us,  yet  you  helieve  it  will 
not  give  way,  you  never  heard  of  such  a 
thing.  Centripetal  and  centrifugal  forces  — 
attraction  and  gravitation  —  keep  it  up. 
Yes,  of  course,  but  what  really  is  the  thing ^ 
the  res  of  that  force,  no  one  ever  has  told, 
or  ever  will  be  able  to  tell  us. 

Again,  this  earth  is  round.  Some  be- 
lated people  will  say  it  is  not,  but  I  know 
it  is,  because  some  years  ago  I  left  the 
shore  of  that  neighboring  bay  of  San  Fran- 
cisco on  the  train,  traveling  eastward,  and 
without  ever  turning  back,  I  sailed  in  again 
through  its  Golden  Gate,  at  an  exactly  op- 
posite point  of  the  compass  I  Well,  two- 
thirds  of  its  vast,  round  surface  is  water ; 
why  doesn't  it  spill?  In  the  twenty-four 
days'  stretch  across  the  great  Pacific,  we 
all  believed  it  would  not  spill,  but  why^  not 
a  soul  of  us  knew.  Of  course,  most  of  us 
did  know  about  "diurnal  motion,"  and 
''pressure  of  atmosphere,"  and  such  other 
school-boy  explanation,  but  the  whole  vast 
phenomenon,  its  currents  and  the  nicety  of 
its  tidal  arrangements,  who  can  ever  com- 
prehend? 


MYSTERIES.  171 

While  I  write,  too,  there  is  a  beautiful  lit- 
tle creeper  called  the  "  B rid al- veil "  silently 
throwing  its  small,  tender  tentacles  around 
that  porch  there,  climbing*  the  training  laths 
as  skillfully  as  a  sailor-boy  shins  a  halyard. 
What  is  it  makes  it  do  that?  What  is  the 
force  within  it  which  pushes  and  guides? 
We  all  helieved  it  would  surely  do  that,  as 
soon  as  this  spring-time  was  old  enough, 
and  the  birds  were  singing  again — but 
Jiow^  the  wisest  of  us  do  not  Tcnow. 

These  and  a  score  of  other  things  "  as 
familiar  as  household  words"  mystify  us, 
yet  we  delight  to  believe  in  them,  all  be- 
cause they  give  us  delight.  And  yet 
we  grumble,  and  question,  and  doubt, 
and  say  we  can  not  possibly  believe  a 
few  other  mysterious  or  miraculous 
things,  because  we  cannot  see  through 
them  at  once.  How  absurd  of  us!  And 
they  come  to  us,  too,  on  a  word  we  ought 
to  respect  —  at  least  that  millions,  as  good 
as  we,  did  respect  and  believe.  It  is  backed, 
moreover,  by  a  promise  that  if  we  but  be 
humbly  patient  enough,  this  film-covered 
glass,  through  which  the  light  comes  only 
very  "darkly,"  will  some  day  be  shattered, 
and  the  whole  infinite  range  of  knowledge 
and  its  unraveled  secrets  will  be  in  full  view, 
with  a  whole  eternity  to  revel  in — satiating 
this  craving  of  ours  to  know.     It  is  worth 


172      THE  REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

waiting"  for,  ever  so  patiently  —  ever  so 
humbly,  is  it  not?  and  vastly  better,  you 
will  agree,  than  the  "exterior  darkness" 
where  the  other  people  are  to  be  forever, 
who  are  both  impatient  and  proud. 


The  men  of  science  object,  that  in  mat- 
ters of  faith  or  belief,  we  surrender  our 
reason.  There  is  a  fallacy,  and  not  an  hon- 
est one,  in  that  assertion.  It  is  not  our 
reason  we  surrender.  It  is  our  understand- 
ing. Our  reason  suppHes  us  with  valid  and 
sufficient  motives  for  believing  what  we 
cannot  understand  even  in  the  common 
things  of  life.  Our  reason  we  are  never 
forbidden  to  use,  but  many  objects  are 
withdrawn  from  our  understanding,  and 
though  it  cannot  always  serve  us,  it  is  no 
hindrance  to  our  belief. 


Chapter    XIII. 
Further  Difficulties  and  Their  Answers. 

There  are  particular  points  of  doctrine 
which  some  allege  to  be  a  block  in  the  way 
of  their  unbelieving,  or  at  least  a  cause  of 
their  doubting  and  their  unrest  of  mind. 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR  ANSWERS.        173 

With  such  persons  I  have  had  no  small 
experience.  I  have  met  them  on  the  high- 
ways of  the  world  —  on  the  decks  of  ocean 
steamers,  in  railways  and  stage-coaches,  in 
out-of-the-way  towns  of  the  New  World, 
on  lonely  sheep-farms,  in  hotels  and  in  pri- 
vate homes. 

It  may  be  useful  to  relate  this  experi- 
ence, and  it  may  prove  helpful  to  others 
like  them,  to  subjoin  the  answers  to  their 
difficulties. 

I    remember  a  young  person    on  board 
the   S.  S.  Bliotomahana  coasting  around 
New  Zealand,  saying  so  earnestly :     ''  If  I 
could  only  know  for  certain  what  God  wants 
me  to  do,  there  is  nothing,  it  seems  to  me, 
that  I  would    not    do  for  Him.     *     *     * 
No,  no,  not  what  is  in  books  or  what  men 
say  —  I  want  Him  to  tell  me  Himself." 
Beply,  —  You  want  what  nobody  else  in  the 
world  is  privileged  to  have  —  private  rev- 
elation, is  that  reasonable?     He  certain- 
ly gave  instructions,  fully  enough,  what 
each  one   is    to    do  —  they    have    been 
handed    down    by    tradition    accurately 
enough.     True,  men  have  confused  some 
parts  of  them  —  but  still    on  proper  in- 
quiry they  are  determinable  and  millions 
agree  about  them  —  unreasonable  expec- 
tation is  foolish  and  futile. 
I  remember  the  wealthy  young  squatter ^ 


174      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

as  the  Arumac  drew  out  from  wharf  to  re- 
sume her  Australian  coasting  trip,  looking 
wearily  over  the  busy  scene  and  saying, 
''What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all  ?  " — that 
is,  the  life  of  men —  the  world  we  had  been 
discussing. 

Meply.  —  Unaided  by  information  from  the 
Author  of  it  we  never  can  know.    Hence 
the  need  of  revelation,  and  our  duty  to 
consult  it  and    submit    to  what  it  tells 
us.     Guesses  from  the   data   around   us 
will  never  answer  your  question. 
I  remember  the  celebrated  meteorologist 
laying  down  for  a  smoking-room  audience — 
a   sympathetic    one  —  in    mid-ocean,    that 
the  only  comfortable  way  to  live  was  just 
to  follow  all  the  instincts  of  nature  when  it 
can  be  conveniently  done,  they  must  be 
right,  else  we  should  not  have  them. 
Mejply,  —  It  is  honorable  to  be  a  naturalist 
in  botany  and  the  laws  of  storms  as  you 
are  —  but  dishonor   and   shame   and  re- 
morse are  sure  to  follow  the  naturalism 
you  advocate  outside  your  profession  — 
there  is  nothing  more  certain  than  that, 
as  abundant  experience  around  us  in  the 
world  shows,  law  courts  and  jails  are  the 
sad  necessities  imposed  by  the  "  instincts 
of  nature"  that  you   would   have  men 
follow  when  it  pleased  them  —  therefore 
there  is  something  wrong  with  nature  — 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR   ANSWERS.        175 

human  nature  —  in  many  respects,  since 
it  leads  to  such  disaster.  It  needs  re- 
straint and  discipline,  and  only  when 
corrected  by  a  higher  teaching,  it  can  be 
trusted  at  all. 

I  remember  the  young  American  sugar- 
planter,  exiled  in  the  tropics,  guessing  that 
whoever  put  him  in  this  world  would  "  look 
after  him  all  right,"  and  if  he  were  to  go 
on  existing  forever,  the  same  disposer  of 
him  would  no  doubt  continue  to  do  so,  he 
"  guessed  he'd  leave  it  just  like  that." 
Beply.  —  If  He  put  you  here  just  like  a 
piece  of  furniture  —  a  table  or  a  rocking- 
chair,  no  doubt  he  would ;  but  if  he  put 
you  here,  and  gave  you  the  means  ex- 
pressly designed  for  looking  after  your- 
self, do  not  be  too  sure  that  He  will  not 
hold  you  responsible  for  not  making  use 
of  them.     And  that  you  could  not  possi- 
bly make  a  mistake  about  it.  He  told  you 
that  way  he  wanted   you   and  expected 
you  to  use  them,  in  looking  after  your- 
self—  at  least  thousands  of  your  fellow- 
beings  —  intelligent  fellow-beings — quite 
as  intelligent  as  you,  perhaps  much  more 
so,  think  He  has.     An  English  writer  of 
repute  declared,  that  he  "  would  rather 
be  an  atheist  and  believe  there  was  no 
God,  than  believe  there  was  a  God  who 
having    created    rational    beings,    gave 


176      THE  KEACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

them  no  intimation  of  His  will,  nor  made 

any  communication  to  them  whatever  — 

the   former   is   a   daring  creed,  but  the 

other  is  a  foolish  one." 

I  remember  the  famous  humorist — serious 

for   the    moment,    while    we    plowed    the 

Atlantic,  wanting  to  know  how  the  God, 

represented  to  us  by  the  preachers,  could 

be  a  possibihty  in  view  of  such  a  world  as 

this  is  :   and  the  English  mechanic-engineer 

saying  with  an  air  of  relief,  but  as  if  the 

relief  were  not  quite  comfortable,  "Yes,  a 

good  many  people  now  say  there  is  no  such 

being  at  all." 

Reply,  —  The  humorist  in  question  is  a 
well-known  persijieur  of  religion  —  per- 
haps since  Voltaire's  time  no  other  au- 
thor—  certainly  none  in  the  English 
tongue,  has  done  so  much  harm  to  re- 
ligious belief,  by  sneers  veneered  with 
wit,  than  he.  He  acknowledged  on  that 
very  afternoon  that  he  had  passed  a  most 
irreligious  youth  —  got  no  instruction 
and  knew  nothing  of  religion,  but  what 
he  afterwards  picked  up  himself.  Be- 
sides, on  his  own  admission,  and  to  judge 
from  a  few  choice  personal  anecdotes, 
that  portion  of  his  existence  had  been 
none  of  the  cleanest.  However,  I  told 
him  he  was  going  against  the  universal 
sense  of  mankind  in  every  time  and  place, 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR   ANSWERS.        177 

which  is  not  a  safe  thing  to  do,  and  that 
the  reason  this  world,  as  it  is,  did  not 
better  reflect  the  Supreme  Being  in  all 
His  goodness,  was  owing  to  the  gift  of 
free  will  to  men,  and  the  exceedingly 
bad  use  that  was  made  of  it  —  "  bringing 
death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe  —  " 
and  the  bad  use  that  many  still  continue 
to  make  of  it.  For  our  friend  the  engine- 
maker,  I  might  have  quoted  the  opening 
of  a  certain  Psalm  —  "  The  fool  says  in 
his  heart  there  is  no  God."  But  if  any 
good  is  to  be  done  to  such  people  you 
must  never  be  offensive  to  them.  Prove 
to  them  there  is  a  God  by  the  very 
necessity  of  the  case  —  no  other  way  of 
accounting  for  our  world  and  its  teeming 
life. 

I  remember  the  exceedingly  agreeable 
and  perfectly  gentlemanly  young  "  station 
owner,"  fond  of  reading  in  the  lonely 
evenings  to  the  sound  of  the  Pacific  surf ; 
very  advanced  in  his  opinions  about  "  pre- 
historic man  "  and  the  myths  of  revelation. 
Though  reared  in  the  Church  of  England 
and  married  to  a  convent-educated  and 
Catholic  wife,  he  declared  his  utter  inability 
to  beheve  what  his  Christian  neighbors 
seemed  to  do  so  easily. 

Beply.  —  See  the  danger  of  reading  books 
by  subtle  and  accomplished  speculators 

12 


178      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

without  any  previous  training  for  argu- 
ment, and  never  having  heard  the  proper 
explanations  of  the  leading  facts  of  rev- 
elation. Pre-historic  man  solves  no 
mystery  of  the  creation  —  it  pushes  it 
back  a  step,  that's  all. 

But  pre-historic  man  has  by  no  means 
been  certainly  discovered.  He  has 
turned  out  to  be  a  mistake  of  the  geolo- 
gists, or  at  least  many  skilled  in  that 
experimental  investigation  —  geology  — 
it  can  hardly  be  called  a  science,'  cer- 
tainly not  an  exact  one  —  admit,  that  the 
evidence  for  him  is  only  slenderly  par- 
tial—  therefore  entirely  inconclusive. 
Thirdly,  what  does  it  matter  to  us,  as  a 
practical  question,  how  old  our  race  is ; 
the  individual  responsibility  for  individ- 
ual conduct  remains  for  each  one  of  us, 
and  that  is  what  should  chiefly  occupy 
our  attention.  Again,  we  should  be 
chary  of  talking  of  myths,  where  so 
much  that  is  mysterious  and  inexplicable 
to  us,  lies  under  our  very  eyes  all  around. 
There  is  a  point  in  all  human  reasoning, 
where  something  must  be  taken  without 
proof,  if  reason  itself  is  not  to  sink  into 
the  void  where  folly  reigns,  and  madness 
rages. 

As  to  inability  to  believe  like  his 
neighbors  —  were  he  as  humble  as  they 


.  DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR  ANSWERS.        179 

were ;  had  he  confessed  his  sins  and  re- 
pented of  them  as  they  had;  had  he 
quietly  and  trustfully  prayed  daily  as 
they  do,  belief  would  have  been  as  easy 
to  him  as  to  them.  Without  tJiose 
things  it  is  easy  to  no  one.  Nor  is  the 
question  of  personal  sin  a  rash  judg- 
ment. Without  certain  fixed  moral  re- 
straints and  instructive  guidance  in 
youth,  it  is  impossible  for  any  one  to 
escape  falling^  into  temptation,  and  hav- 
ing sinned,  and  sin  remaining,  a  parti- 
tion is  raised  between  God  and  the  soul. 
Until  that  is  removed  the  peace  of  be- 
lieving will  never  come.  It  was  not  for 
nothing  we  were  told,  "  Blessed  are  the 
clean  of  heart  for  they  shall  see  God." 
This  implies  its  converse,  Unblessed  are 
the  unclean  of  heart,  for  they  cannot  see 
God. 

I  remember  the  Queensland  "  slop-shop  " 

keeper  who  told  me  to  write  him  down  an 

atheist.     He  said  this  was  a  country  of  free 

thought,  and   he   did   not  want  any  more 

trouble  than  his  business  gave  him. 

Reply.  — True,  every  one  was  free,  hefore 

the  law^  to  think  as  he  pleased,  but  there 

was  a  higher  law  before  which  he  was 

not  free,  else  why  did  he  not  with  equal 

freedom  thinh  he  was  not  to  die;  think 

that  he  could  arrange  for  his  continued 


180      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

existence  just  as  it  suited  him ;  that,  he 
could  not  do.     Therefore,  there   was  a 
Power  superior  to  him  of  which  he  had 
better   take   account.     His   business  no 
doubt   demanded    attention   and   should 
have   it,  but   a   day   would   come  when 
business  and  all   he   ever   gained  by  it, 
should  stay  behind,  and  he  would  have 
to  go  forth  alone,  as  little  consulted  as 
when  he  was  sent  here.     Is  it  not  a  little 
daring,  then,  to  brave  a  Power  so  much 
greater  than  he,  and  not  try  to  find  out 
what  that  Power  requires  to  be  done, 
beyond  mere  business,  which  is  not  the 
ultimate  end  of  man? 
I  remember  the  old  fellow  on  an  Ameri- 
can  "ranch"    who   boasted  —  being  then 
in  the  very  "sere   leaf,"  indeed  —  that  he 
never  had   done   anything  wrong  (in   his 
numerous  family  such   a   thing   as  prayer 
was  unknown)  ;  he  was  not  afraid  to  die. 
He  had  been  pretty  successful  after  a  hard 
struggle  in  this  life,  and  if  there  happened 
to  be  another  life,  he  would  struggle  there 
too,  and  no  doubt  meet  with  the  same  suc- 
cess.    Moreover,  he  had  been  a  good  Mason 
and  everybody  knew  that  the  Free  Masons 
were  too  great  a  body  to  fear  anything  or 
anybody?     "  They  were  all  right." 
Heply,  —  A  seared  conscience  is  the  great- 
est of  calamities.     It  is  the  eternal  judg- 


DIFFICULTIES    AND    THEIR   ANSWERS.         181 

ment  already  passed.  It  is  a  most  diffi- 
cult thing  to  revivify  with  new  sap.  But 
it  is  the  only  chance.  It  may  be  done 
by  convincing  this  self-satisfied  soul  that 
he  had  done  wrong,  by  omission  for  in- 
stance. "  Remember  to  keep  holy  My 
Sabbath  day,"  was  that  never  infringed 
ill  course  of  your  long  life?  "  Thou 
shalt  adore  thy  God  and  Him  only  shalt 
thou  serve."  You  rarely,  if  ever,  even 
acknowledged  Him  by  prayer,  and  so 
forth.  As  for  that  confidence  in  the 
great  Masonic  body,  be  not  deceived 
about  their  importance  or  help.  Why, 
they  were  unheard  of  before  the  seven- 
teenth century  and  originated  among  the 
Socinians  and  other  free-thought  Protest- 
ants of  these  comparatively  recent  times. 
As  a  mutual  help  society  you  may  have 
derived  certain  money  benefits  from  it, 
but  its  methods  are  suspect  to  all  candid 
minds.  If  all  its  objects  are  good  why 
act  like  conspirators  and  bind  people  by 
oath  and  (sometimes)  under  penalty  of 
death  to  secrecy  V  It  becomes  apparent 
every  day  that  their  methods  are  either 
foolish  or  wicked.  They  are  losing  caste 
among  all  sensible  and  respectable  people, 
and  it  may  be  safely  predicted  that,  in 
time,  this  sensational  association  will  die 
oblivion's   death,   like    all   other  absurd 


182      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

conspiracies.     The  first  notice  ever  taken 
of    them   by  the  Popes,   was  in   1738. 
Clement  XII.  explained  who  they  were, 
and  what  were  their  objects,  and  forbade 
all  Catholics  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
them.      If     they     had    existed    always 
throughout  Europe  is  it  likely  that  the 
watchful   head   of  European  society,  the 
Pope,  would  never  have  heard  of  them 
before  or  noticed  them?  —  most  unlikely. 
This  condition  of  soul  in  old  age  always 
arises,  from  keeping  the  mind  in  culpable 
religious    ignorance    through    life.      If 
people  would  read  even  the  Catechism 
occasionally  this  could  never  happen. 
I  remember  the  Colonial  young  lady  — 
High  school  graduate  —  who  professed  to 
believe  in  nothing,  and  was  heard  to  long 
for  some  one   to  arise  who  should  free  the 
world  from  this  "bother"  about  religion. 
Meply,  —  (I  regret  to  say  that  this  case  is 
but  a  type  of  numerous  young  ladies  to 
be  met  in  the  Colonies,  as  an  outcome  of 
free,  compulsory  and  secular  education. 
While  I  was   in   Wellington,  N.  Z.,   a 
young   girl   of   19   walked  out  one  fine 
summer  morning  from  her  parents'  well- 
to-do-home,    furnished    with    sketching 
materials,   and  sat  down   in   the  public 
park   apparently   for  a  practice  in  draw- 
ing, of  which  she  was  rather  fond.   After 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR   ANSWERS.         183 

a  while,  she  there  deliberately  took  a 
pistol  from  her  pocket  and  blew  her 
brains  out!)  The  best  remedy  for  our 
young  friend,  whom  ever^^body  admit- 
ted to  be  as  amiable  as  she  was  fair, 
turned  out  to  be  association  with  a  good 
Catholic  family  in  which  there  were  well- 
brought  up  young  girls  like  herself,  who 
did  not  preach  to  her  or  at  her,  but  who 
won  her  by  the  happy  and  unostentatious 
example  of  their  own  lives,  and  in  time  of 
need  did  her  a  gentle  and  generous 
service. 

I  remember  the  amiable  and  hospitable 
lady  born  far  south  of  the  Equator,  who 
was  '^trying  Theosophy ; "  liked  it  very 
well,  but  had  not  got  so  far  as  to  reconcile 
herself  to  the  fact  that  her  four  beautiful 
children  had  already  been  cats  or  mice  or 
snakes,  may  be,  in  the  pre-existence  of  the 
second  or  third  plano-spliere ;  her  husband 
was  a  Itosecrucian  and  very  deep  in  the 
occult. 

Heply :  —  I  gave  her  a  ' '  Life  of  Madame 
Blavatsky,"  by  a  gentleman  of  St. 
Petersburg,  whose  work  has  been  trans- 
lated into  English  and  published  at  the 
cost  of  the  London  "  Psychical  Kesearch 
Society."  That  work  must  conclusively 
end  forever,  in  all  reasonable  and  respect- 
able  minds,  the   theosophic  craze.     On 


184      THE  REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

her  evidence  Madame  Blavatsky  is  proved 
to  be  but  a  clever  adventuress,  who  did  not 
stick  at  the  meanest  tricks  of  a  charlatan 
to  deceive  and  delude  her  dupes.     This 
book  may  be  had  from  any  London  book 
agent,  and  is  most  useful  to  have  just 
now  to  lay  Mahatmas  and  spooJcs. 
I  remember  the  man  who  was  puzzled  to 
know  —  if  Christ  were  God  and  came  to 
redeem  the  world,  why  was  it  not  visibly 
redeemed?     Did  the  world,  as  we  see   it, 
look  as  if  it  were  redeemed?     The  world  is 
full  of  sin,  and  suffering,  and  death.     Then 
he  told  a  story  of  a  poor  old  negro  Metho- 
dist of  Carolina,  who  had  had  ''  salvation  '' 
preached  at  him  all  his  life,  and  who  was 
very  religious  in  his  own  bothered  way ; 
one  day  an  earthquake  happened  that  shook 
things  up  "  pretty  considerable  "  and  scared 
the  old  man  so  that  he  took  to  his  prayers. 
"  Oh  A' mighty  God,"  he  said,  "you  come 
right  down  heah  and   fix   things   up,  but 
don't  you   send   yo'    Son   dis  time,  come 
yo'self  —  dis  job  is  too  big  and  mebbe  He 
can't  do  it."     He   excused  the   profanity 
by  the  great  simplicity  of   the  poor,  old 
soul,  but  he  had  no  doubt  but  the  same 
idea  was  struggling  through  the  old  dark- 
ey's brain  that  was  such  a  trouble  to  his 
own  mind.     The  thing  was  de  facto  not 
accomplished. 


DIFFICULTIES    AND    THEIR   ANSWERS.         185 

Heply,  —  Redemption,  as  has  always  been 
explained,  does  not,  primarily,  regard  the 
earthly  condition  of  the  race.  Its  effect 
is  to  make  it  possible  for  man  to  regain 
a  title  to  the  "eternal  inheritance"  — 
''facta  redemptione  "  — the  price  having 
been  paid  for  him.  The  title  had  been 
hopelessly  lost  to  him,  and  infinite  repa- 
ration was  needed  —  co-eqnal  with  the 
character  of  Him  who  was  wronged,  by 
revolt  against  His  command.  This  was 
done  through  the  Incarnation;  and 
through  that  alone  could  it  have  been 
effected.  But  it  has  not  ended  man's 
state  of  probation  —  it  now  gives  him  a 
powerful  and  salutary  motive  for  effort ; 
he  is  assured  that  he  can  earn  the  great 
reward,  and  his  earning  power,  so  to 
speak,  is  made  effective  and  secure. 

It  is  not  accurate  to  say,  that  there 
are  no  effects  visible  in  the  world  from 
the  Incarnation  and  its  work.  A  vast 
change  for  the  better  has  come  over  the 
lives  of  men,  who  by  the  good  use  of 
their  free  will  Have  lent  themselves  to 
the  influence  of  Christianity.  Compari- 
sons of  Christian  lives  with  the  most 
cultured  among  ancient  peoples,  prove 
this  beneficial  change  beyond  all  doubt. 
And  the  contemporary  knowledge  we 
have  of  peoples  not  yet   Christianized, 


186      THE  REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE. 

affords  evidence   of    Christianity's    ele- 
vating  and  civilizing   influence.     If  sin 
abounds  and  its  necessary  shadow,  suffer- 
ing, it  comes  from  the  perverse  use  of  a 
will   left  free    to    choose    evil  courses, 
which  unfortunately  the  majority  do,  in 
spite  of   and  in  opposition  to  the  teach- 
ings and  protests  of  Christianity ;  and  so 
have     apparently    discredited    by    their 
conduct    the  work  of    the  Redemption. 
Death  for  the  good  is  not  an  evil ;  you 
ought  to  be  a  little    more    advanced  in 
reasoning  power    and    intelligence  than 
the  "  negro  from  Carolina." 
I  remember  the  proprietor  of  a  New  Zea- 
land  homestead  picturesquely   situated  by 
the  "  wide  Pacific  strand  "  —  a  man  of  more 
than   average    education,    who    was    very 
aggressive  against  all  things  of  faith.     His 
niind  had  even  taken  an  angry  turn.     His 
mother,  to  whom   he   had  been   much  at- 
tached, had  died  in  the  slow  suffering  of 
cancer.     This  incensed    him    against    the 
supernal  Power  —  he   used  to   say,  "  If  I 

could  only  get  at  it I  "     He  assumed 

the  role  of  an  infidel  propagandist  on  all 
occasions,  even  with  his  poor  workmen. 
He  had  only  two  children.  One  had  been 
baptized  by  the  care  of  the  grandmother, 
who  was  "  an  Anglican  ; ' '  when  she  died 
he  kept   the   second  unbaptized  —  as    an 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIK   ANSWERS.        187 

experiment  to  show  off  against  "  the  other 
fellow."  He  had  made  his  gentle  and 
amiable  little  wife  as  great  an  unbeliever  as 
himself. 

Beply,  —  He  was  reared  in  the  Anglican 
communion.  Time  has  sadly  demon- 
strated that  private  judgment  is  the 
portico  of  the  free  thought,  which  means 
thought  utterly  unbridled  and  un- 
licensed—  a  thing  that  is  fast  making 
human  society  unbearable,  for  rea- 
sonable and  civilized  men.  Mrs.  Bes- 
ant,  the  wife  of  an  Anglican  parson, 
has  also  informed  the  world  that  the 
sight  of  her  first  baby,  agonizing  in 
diphtheria,  steeled  her  heart  against 
God  and  religion.  It  is  as  unfair,  as  it 
is  shallow,  to  charge  to  God  every  par- 
ticular of  the  condition  of  secondary 
'  causes  who  are  free  agents  and  endowed 
with  faculties  for  self-help  and  midual 
protection.  It  looks  a  fair  bargain  that 
the  First  Cause  should  have  given  over  a 
portion  of  His  creation  to  such  agents 
furnished  with  sufficient  capital,  so  to 
speak,  to  get  along.  He  added  to  it 
besides  a  great  liberality  of  treatment-, 
never  interfering  with  them  for  their 
allotted  time,  withdrawing  his  visible 
presence  lest  it  should  inconvenience  or 
hamper  them   in  any   way;  and  for  all 


188      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

that  only  exacting  a  reasonable  service 
and  acknowledgment.  The  accidents  of 
all  kinds  occurring  in  this  temporary  con- 
dition of  things,  (and  sickness  and 
diseases  are  among  them)  regard  the 
secondary  agents.  To  expect  Him  to 
interfere  in  every  case  exceeds  the  limits 
of  His  part  of  the  bargain  as  a  Provisor 
generalis  —  the  primary  Providence.  It 
is  much  to  have  been  assured  by  Him, 
that  full  and  just  compensation  shall 
be  made  to  those  w^ho  submissively 
suffer;  "  Merces  tua  magna  nimis.^^  It 
is  charged,  that  it  is  inhumane  in  Him 
to  look  on  at  suffering,  ahle  to  relieve 
and  cure^  and  not  doing  so;  even  men 
would  not  be  so  unfeeling  were  it  in 
their  power.  But  this  is  making  God, 
human  merely.  We  hear  a  good  deal 
•  from  infidels  about  anthropomorphism^ 
which  obtains,  say  they,  when  believers 
reduce  God  merely  to  human  dimensions 
in  their  conception  of  Him.  But  what 
are  they  doing  in  the  case  discussed? 
Why,  they  are  supposing  God  to  be 
exactly  like  the  human  being,  and  blam- 
ing Him  for  not  being  so.  A  perpetual 
interference  for  relief  of  every  pang  or 
pain,  no  matter  how  prolonged,  would 
upset  the  whole  established  order,  which 
no  rational  being,  at  present,  looks  for. 


DIFFICULTIES   AND    THEIR   ANSWERS.         189 

If  this  state  were  Jinal  perhaps  we  might, 
with  a  show  of  reason,  look  to  Him  for 
help  at  every  turn.  But  it  is  not  final, 
we  know ;  and  the  general  expectation 
is,  that  the  day  of  full  compensation  and 
explanation  will  surely  come. 

With  regard  to  the  stupid  and  unfair 
experiment  of  this  man  with  his  un  bap- 
tized boy,  the  same  explanation  holds 
good  as  was  given  above  about  redemp- 
tion. The  effects  await  on  the  action  of 
free  will  and  its  use,  and  the  sacrament 
chiefly  refers  to  the  spiritual  order  and 
the  eternal  future  state.  Baptism  is  not 
a  visible  and  miraculous  transformation 
in  the  present;  no  one  pretends  that  it 
is.  The  titled  poet  who  returned  a 
Buddhist  from  Japan,  delights  to  dwell 
on  the  superiority  of  manners  and  bear- 
ing of  Japanese  children  over  Christian 
children.  Besides  that  this  depends  on 
what  kind  of  Christian  children  he  has 
been  acquainted  with  ;  he  forgets  that  we 
learn  from  other  travelers  in  that  country, 
as  intelligently  observant  as  he,  that  the 
Japs  in  general  even  from  a  tender  age, 
are  the  most  shamelessly  lascivious  of 
peoples — and  the  Chinese,  as  is  well 
known,  are  hardly  better. 

Finally,  with  regard  to  this  man's  wish 
"to  get    at"    the   great  First  Cause  — 


190      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

merely  to  fancy  this  little  five-feet  long 
creature  "  getting  at  "  the  mighty  Maker 
of  the  universe,   has  something  so  sub- 
limely   ludicrous    in    it,    that  it    would 
amuse,  if  its  impiety  did  not  terrify. 
I    remember    the   souls    troubled    about 
prayer.     One   said   it    was    talking  into  a 
great   silence ;   it  was   hard   not   to   grow 
tired  of  saying  things  all  by  yourself,   to 
which    no    sound  or  word  was  ever  heard 
in  reply ;  that  it  required  a  force  of  imagi- 
nation, which  many  people  do  not  possess, 
to  fancy  God  present  with  us  or  listening 
when  we  pray. 

JReply,  —  Prayer  of  course  is  not  like  a 
human  conversation.  It  is  impossible 
without  faith.  Prepared  by  what  faith 
teaches  about  it;  that  there  is  a  God 
who  is  interested  in  us  because  he  owns 
us ;  who  wishes  us  to  look  on  Him  as 
a  Father,  and  expects  us  to  depend  on 
and  confide  in  Him;  who  is  all  power- 
ful, able,  and  willing  to  help  in  all  things 
for  our  good  —  then  with  such  conviction 
in  mind,  it  will  appear  far  from  talking 
into  void,  or  tiresome  or  needing  imagina- 
tion. At  the  same  time  every  one  must 
confess  to  a  kind  of  natural  need  of  com- 
muning about  himself  with  some  one. 
This  comes  from  the  fact  of  our  individ- 
uality.    The  peculiar   and  distinct   per- 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR   ANSWERS.        191 

sonality  each  one  has,  makes  us  uncom- 
fortable to  feel  alone  and  isolated  amid 
accidents  and  fortunes  of  a  temporary 
existence.  This  is  a  natural  pre-disposi- 
tion  to  prayer.  It  is  evidenced  in  the  child 
telling  all  about  its  little  self  and  its  con- 
cerns to  its  mother  or  its  care-taker. 
Nov  does  the  same  want  ever  leave  the 
man,  which  proves  the  reasonableness  of 
the  assertions  of  faith. 
Another  had  given  up  prayer  because  it 
seems  so  unmanly  —  cowardly  in  fact  —  to 
grovel  perpetually,  to  bepraise  and  beg. 
Beply.  —  An  unmanly  or  cowardly  act  is 
to  refuse  to  face  a  danger,  or  to  endure 
a  hardship,  or  to  shirk  a  painful  or  labor- 
ious task,  when  duty  and  a  greater  good 
call  on  us  to  do  and  dare.  Where  do  we 
do  any  of  these  mean  things  in  prayer? 
We  feel  our  dependence,  knowing  we 
have  been  created  by  a  Power  superior 
to  ourselves,  exalting  the  qualities  of 
that  Creator,  idealizing  His  great  and 
good  attributes,  is  so  far  from  groveling 
that  it  exalts  our  idea  of  ourselves  —  in- 
creases our  esteem  for  ourselves  and 
gives  us  courage.  It  is  only  fair  and 
just  in  us  and  manly  too,  to  acknowledge 
our  dependence.  We  ask  to  be 
strengthened  as  to  what  He  wants  us  to 
do,  and  make  ready  to  do  it  at  any  cost 


192      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

or  trouble  to  ourselves.  Recognizing  in 
ourselves  an  inherent  weakness  to  do 
what  is  good  and  noble,  we  seek  His  help 
and  encouragement  to  overcome  our  slug- 
gish inclinations.  What  is  cowardly  or 
unmanly  in  all  that?  Why,  it  is  brave 
and  manly,  and  rational. 

We  break  His  commands  and  sue  for 
pardon.     If  we  did  not,  it  would  be  con- 
tempt to  the   High  Court   and  most  in- 
sulting to  Him.     Among  ourselves  men 
do  not  commend  or  admire  the  braggart 
or  desperado,  who  violates  his  country's 
laws  and   despises   its  courts  of  justice. 
The    man    who     assaults    a   battery   of 
Maxim  guns  with  a  pea-shooter  or  a  pop- 
gun, is  not  set  down  among  the  manly 
and  the  brave  —  he  is  a  fool.     Not  less  a 
fooJ  is  the  man  who  daunts  the  Ominipo- 
tent  and  braves  the  eternal  punishment. 
You  have   to  study  the  difference  be- 
tween the  brave  man  and  a  fool. 
Another  was  troubled  at  seeing  people  in 
long   hours   of   prayer   before  the  altar  at 
such  times  as  the  Qjiaranf    ore^  or  ]N"uns 
and  Monks  in    their   chapels  —  they  come 
and  go  and  never  the  slightest  notice  taken 
of  them,  or  at  least  sign  of  approval  —  how 
wearisome ! 

Beply.  —  These  good   people    know   what 
they  are  doing.     They  are  quite  satisfied 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR   ANSWERS,        193 

about  the  silence,  recognize  it  as  part 
of  the  trial  of  faith,  and  are  content  to 
await  the  end,  knowing  that  the  day 
for  silence  will  be  over  soon  and  knowl- 
edge of  all  things  imparted.  I  was 
once  surprised  to  find  in  a  novel  of  the 
sensuous  school  this  sentence :  "  When 
men  and  women  rise  from  prayer  and 
find  themselves  better,  that  prayer  is 
answered." 

That  is  the   only   notice  those   good 
souls  want  or  expect. 
Another  found  a  great  difficulty  in  the 
text  of  Matt.  vi:7,  where  much  speaking 
in  prayer  is  forbidden  by  our  Lord  ;  in  fact 
He  there  confines  all  prayer  to  one  short 
form  —  the   Our  Father  —  and  the   direct 
contradiction  to   that,  in   the   voluminous 
prayer-books  and  Breviaries,  is  sanctioned 
and  enjoined  by  the  Church. 
Re'ply. — That  text  is   aimed   at  the   cor- 
rection of  one  special  abuse  —  the  osten- 
tatious and  empty  piety  of  the  Pharisees 
—  as  may  plainly  be  seen  by  reading  the 
whole  passage. 

In  other  places  when  not  addressing 
Himself  to  an  abuse,  our  Lord  mculcates 
frequent  and  repeated  prayer  and  gave 
the  example  Himself  of  long  prayer  — 
prolixius  orahat. 

The  Our  Father  is  a  short  form,  it  is 

13 


194      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

true,  but  prayers  of  all  kinds,  no  matter 
how   long,  are  nothing  but  the  expan- 
sion   of    that    divine     compendium,    as 
ascetic  writers  often  demonstrated. 
Another  adduced  puzzling  cases  of  people 
who  prayed  long  and  earnestly  for  a  mani- 
festly  good  thing  and   were  not  heard  — 
one  especially  about  people  weakly  addicted 
to  the  drink  habit.     He  had  known  some 
who  w^ere  so  ashamed  and  conscious  of  that 
terrible   weakness,  that  they  left   nothing 
undone,   followed    strictly   every    spiritual 
advice,  novenas,  communions,  confessions, 
for  help,  and  to  no  avail  —  they  fell  again 
and  again. 

Beply,  —  It  is  nowhere  taught  that  mira- 
cles follow  prayers  on  all  occasions. 
Neither  must  it  be  looked  for,  that 
prayer  should  result  in  loss  of  will- 
powder  in  the  petitioner  in  any  given  ac- 
tion or  habit  —  one's  will  is  not  suddenly 
taken  away  and  grace  substituted  for  it. 
We  must  be  satisfied  to  struggle  against 
temptation  aided  by  grace,  with  a  will 
very  much  inclined  to  the  evil  whose 
habit  we  culpably  began. 

In  the  case  cited  there  were  relapses,  it 
is  true,  but  to  my  knowledge  there  were 
intervals  of  abstention  and  improvement, 
and  that  was  a  decided  gain.  We  can 
not  know  the  workings  of  an  individual 


DIFFICULTIES   AND  THEIR   ANSWERS.        195 

soul,  or   what  flaw  there  may  be  in  its 
disposition,   to  account   for  failure,    but 
it  is   there,  be  assured,  lies    the  cause. 
Our  Lord  promised  that  everything  we 
ask   the  Father   in   His    name  shall    be 
granted  —  yes,  but  it  must  be  in  every- 
thing—  in  matter  and  disposition  —  en- 
tirely worthy  of  the  holy  name  we  ask  in. 
I   remember   the   soul  distressed  by  the 
sight  of  a  crucifix;  the  thought  would  keep 
rising.    What  kind  of  a  Being  or  Justice 
can  that  be,  who  could  look  upon  a  spec- 
tacle so  horrible  and  be  pleased  or  placated 
or  appeased  by  it  or  even  accept  it  at  all? 
Then  the  question  would  come  —  If  that  is 
God  —  if  Christ  is  God  —  have  we  not  the 
curious  situation  of  God  offering  Himself 
to  Himself — Himself   suffering  that   His 
own  self  or  His  own  Justice  may  be  satis- 
fied?    There  are  souls  wKo   would   rather 
suffer    any    loss    themselves   than   accept 
anything  so  cruel  from  another. 
Heply. — This  opens  up  the  whole  mystery 
of  the  Incarnation,  and  it  is  a  very  great 
one.     We  can  never  hope  to  fathom  that 
here  below.     Convince  yourself  of  hav- 
ing been  assured  on  very  good  authority, 
accepted  by  millions  as  wise  as  you,  that 
unless  that  happened  it  would  fare  very 
badly  with  you  and  with  all  this  world. 
Kelieve  yourself  also  with  the    opinion. 


196      THE   REACTION  FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

that  all  the  cruel  details  of  that  sacrifice 
were  not  essential,  because  a  word  —  an 
act  —  one  tear  of  a  divine  and  hu7nan 
person y  would   have   been  price  enough 

'  for  many  condemned  races  —  all  his 
actions  being  of  infinite  value —  but 
Christ  chose  Himself  to  undergo  them 
to  increase  men's  notion  of  the  great 
guilt  of  sin  and  offer  a  striking  contra- 
diction in  His  own  person  to  pride,  lust, 
and  guilty  indulgences,  to  which  all  men 
are,  as  everybody  knows,  and  as  he 
foreknew,  so  prone. 

It  is  not  accurate  to  say  that  God  of- 
fered Himself  to  Himself  barely.  There 
was  present  in  the  offering  the  human 
nature  which  He  assumed  suffering,  too, 
and  whose  suffering  clothed  round  by  a 
divine  personality,  became  infinite  in  value 
and  co-equal  with  the  magnitude  of  an  of- 
fense done  to  infinite  justice  and  majesty. 
About  souls  suffering  loss  rather  than 
accept  for  themselves  so  cruel  a  sacri- 
fice —  they  little  know  what  they  are 
talking  about.  On  the  assurance  of 
revelation  there  is  nothing  more  certain 
than  that,  if  that  loss  did  overtake  them, 
they  would  be  eternally  sorry  for  their 
pride-inspired  and  ignorant  folly. 
I  remember  others  disturbed  by  reading 

about  the  world  in  the  time  of  Christ.     It 


DIFFICULTIES    AND   THEIR    ANSWERS.        l97 

was  in  a  very  bad  state  —  there  were  teem- 
ing  populations    in    the  Farther    East,  in 
India,  Thibet,  China,  Japan  —  Brahmins, 
Buddhists,    Confucians,    Shinto   idol  wor- 
shipers.    Black  Africa  was  crowded  with 
naked  savage  cannibals   reveling   in    lust, 
slaughter,  blood,  cruelty  —  worse  than  the 
horrors  there  to-day,  no  doubt.     The  vast 
Roman  Empire  had  altars  for  impure  idols 
and   temples  for    a    hundred    gods.     The 
islands  of  antipodean  seas  were  peopled  as 
now,      with     fearful     flesh-eating    tribes. 
Christ  came  to  teach  and  to  save  all,  yet 
He  seemed  to  take  no  care  at  all  about  these 
hundreds  of  millions,  living  and  dying  while 
He  lived.     He  never  alluded  to  their  exist- 
ence.     His     work    was    restricted — very 
local.     A  very  small  number  knew  he  was 
there  at   all,  and  fewer  still  knew  him  for 
the  Messiah,  and  when  He  died,  notwith- 
standing all  His  miracles,  scarcely  any  at 
all  believed  or  were  converted. 
Beply.  —  The  same  difficulty  shadows  the 
whole  history  of  the  Jews.     It  lies  in  the 
words  chosen   "people.     The  fact   is  cer- 
tainly before  us  that  they  were  divinely 
favored  before  all  other  and  more  numer- 
ous peoples.     At  the  same  time  it  clears 
away    a   good   deal  of   the   mystery   to 
remember  that  «Z^  peoples  in  the  far-back 
centuries  were  Hebrews  once  —  all  of  the 


198      THE   REACTION   FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

one  stock.  The  human  race  was  once 
small  in  number,  but  in  the  growth  and 
vast  increase  there  was  a  dispersion-pro- 
cess and  a  winnowing  according  to 
deserts  ;  and  God  dealt  to  each  the  meas- 
ure of  His  justice  and  treatment  of  His 
wisdom,  just  as  they  deserved  from  Him. 
Abraham  and  his  seed  deserved  best  from 
Him  and  so  were  made  His  favored 
agents.  The  rest  were  permitted  to 
wander  apart  and  left  to  their  own 
devices,  just  as  we  see  most  of  them 
still  —  yellow,  red,  brown  and  black 
men  —  idolaters  and  cannibals. 

Christ  did  not  choose  to  appear  simul- 
taneously and  preach  to  them  all,  though 
being  divine.  He  might  have  done 
so,  it  is  true.  Equally  true  that  mill- 
ions still  remain  ignorant  of  Him  and 
His  divine  mission.  But  to  argue  with 
justice  from  this  and  similar  facts, 
regarding  peoples,  we  should  know  the 
whole  state  of  the  case  —  concerning 
the  history  of  their  conduct  and  deal- 
ings with  God.  Manifestly  we  do  not 
know,  and  never  can  know  that ;  so  it  is 
but  reasonable  to  assume  a  neutral,  if  a 
waiting,  attitude.  Had  Christ  come  in 
that  clearly  superhuman  character,  then 
the  present  order  of  trial  would  have  there 
and  then  ended.     Belief  should  have  been 


DIFFICULTIES    AND    THEIR   ANSWERS.         199 

compelled,  and  faith  dispensed  with. 
That  kind  of  coming,  however,  is  prom- 
ised and  will  happen  —  when  all  things 
shall  be  made  manifest. 

As  to  the  fewness  of  the  converted, 
notwithstanding  all  the  miracles  our  Lord 
performed,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  immense  numbers  —  5,000  after  one 
sermon  and  3,000  after  another  —  who 
became  Christians  immediately  on  the 
apostle's  preaching  Christ  crucified  and 
risen,  must  have  been  those  who  had  seen 
Him  and  witnessed  His  miracles,  and 
some  the  subjects  of  them  in  their  own 
persons,  else  they  would  never  have 
yielded  so  readily, 

I  remember  those  again  who  were  sad- 
dened in  mind  and  doubtful  of  a  divine 
goodness  by  the  cruelties  of  life ;  the  hid- 
eous deformities  and  diseases,  the  slow 
agony  of  wasting  cancers  and  leprosy  and 
the  like ;  the  blood-thirstiness  that  breaks 
out  in  all  mankind,  savage  and  civilized 
alike;  then  the  cruelties  of  the  animal 
world ;  all  the  fierce  beasts  and  poisonous 
things ;  tigers,  lions,  snakes,  jaguars,  wild 
elephants,  sharks  and  sword-fish,  vultures, 
hawks,  eagles  —  the  butcher  bird  that 
impales  its  living  food  on  a  thorn  and 
sits  watching  its  writhings  —  the  sea  louse 
that  eats   into   the   spinal   marrow  of   the 


200      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

whale  and  drives  the  monster  mad  —  the 
Kea  of  New  Zealand  that  digs  its  beak  into 
the  flesh  of  the  live  sheep  for  the  kidney 
fat  and  only  that  — who  gave  them  all 
those  pitiless  instincts? 
Hejply.  —  Why  should  such  things  trouble 
your  mind?  Have  you  personally  any 
great  reaso^  to  complain  of  God's  good- 
ness to  you?  If  unhappily  there  are 
people  subject  to  the  fearful  ills  that 
flesh  is  heir  to,  as  a  consequence  of  the 
aboriginal  blight  of  evil,  has  not  God 
imparted  instincts  of  compassion  and 
mutual  help  to  his  creatures?  All  are 
not  so  afflicted  —  far  from  it  —  only  the 
few,  very  few,  comparatively,  and  it 
generally  comes  from  the  accidents  oc- 
casioned by  secondary  causes ;  and  is  it 
not  beautiful  to  see  the  sane  always 
ready  to  succor  the  unsound,  exhibit- 
ing rare  and  unselfish  virtue,  and  confer- 
ring comparative  happiness  on  the  af- 
flicted? Men  are  thus  made  the  vice- 
regents —  the  secondary  Providence  of 
God  to  one  another  in  the  world.  The 
old  scholastics  have  discussed  the  ani- 
mals and  their  ways.  It  was  their  opin- 
ion that,  having  been  made  for  man,  and 
originally  subject  to  him,  it  was  part  of 
his  penalty  when  he  fell,  that  the  animals 
should  break  away  from  him  into  a  wild 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR  ANSWERS.        201 

state  and  become  his  enemies,  and  thus 
diverted,  by  his  fault,  from  their  original 
destination,  they  have  ramped  about, 
soured  —  lost  —  waste  parts  of  the  crea- 
tion, in  fact,  ever  since;  but  the  Creator 
has  not  left  man  at  their  mercy;  man 
still  holds  the  upper  hand,  in  the  main, 
as  everybody  knows. 

Human  blood-thirstiness  is  the  ruinous 
part  of  a  structure  that  once  was  noble, 
and  which  still  shows  not  unsightly  bits 
of  what  it  originally  was.  It  can  only  be 
accounted  for  on  the  ground  of  the  fall 
into  moral  evil  —  the  failure  in  the  first 
trial  of  freewill  —  another  part  of  sin's 
penalty. 

The  instances  of  set  and  deliberate 
cruelty  of  animals  are  far  from  being 
authenticated,  nor  are  such  practises  uni- 
form and  habitual.  A  sheep  farmer  of 
long  experience  in  New  Zealand  told  me, 
that  the  Kea  bird  learned  to  locate  the 
kidney  fat  of  the  sheep  from  his  habit  of 
prowling  about  the  station  slaughter-yard 
and  picking  at  the  sheep-skins  spread 
out  to  dry  with  the  wool  down.  The 
most  toothsome  bit  was  this  fat  in  the 
region  of  the  kidneys  or  liver,  and  when 
the  skins  were  not  there  to  be  picked,  he 
went  for  the  sheep  on  the  hills  and  locat- 
ing the  part  where  he  got  his   so-appe- 


202      THE   REACTION   FROM   AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

tizing  morsel,  he  fastened  his  claws  in 
the  wool  and  sunk  his  beak  in  the  soft 
flesh  above  the  haunches,  even  then  he 
did  not  always  strike  the  fat  directly 
either,  or  neatly!  Other  birds,  from 
imitative  habit,  copied  the  knowing  ones 
and  so  this  curious  custom  of  theirs  came 
to  be. 

For  the  rest,  what  are  animals  to  you ; 
you  have  not  created  them ;  you  are  not 
responsible   for  them?      They  are  very 
near  us,  and  they  are  as  far  away  from  us 
as  mystery ;  they  are  strangers  to  us  in 
reality.      They   live   their  own   peculiar 
life  and  there's  an  end  of  it. 
I  remember  others,  and  they  were  many, 
who  were  incensed  against  the  doctrine  of 
Hell.     Some  felt  that  a  Being  who  could 
look  on  at  the  tortures  of  his  own  creature 
for  eternity,  could  not  be  an  object  of  any 
one's    love,     admiration     and     adoration; 
others,  that  they  were  doing  God  a  service, 
vindicating  Him,  by  repudiating  what  they 
called  a  horrible  doctrine;  others  asserted 
that  it  was  a  fiction  invented  by  men  to 
hold  other  men  in  subjection  by  force  of 
terror  —  a  horrid    nightmare   imposed    on 
human  minds  by  the  designing  and  so  on. 
Reply, —  ^"0  doubt  Hell  is  an  awful  doc- 
trine.    1S(0  use  in  saying  that  it  is  easy 
to  be  calmly  reconciled  to  it.     But  there 


DIFFICULTIES    AND    THEIR   ANSWERS.         203 

is  no  use  either  in  denying  it.  Viewing 
the  minds  of  men  as  a  whole,  we  find 
that  in  every  time, it  formed  an  inseparable 
portion  of  religious  belief.  This  ex- 
trinsic evidence  throws  doubt  at  once  on 
your  denial.  And  the  thing  is  so  awful 
that  —  presented  evjen  as  doubtful  —  it 
should  urge  every  one  to  take  no  risk,  to 
seek  further  and  make  himself  very  sure 
that  he  is  making  no  mistake  about  what 
may  result  in  such  a  frightful  disaster  to 
himself.  For  it  is  said  to  be  eternal  and 
a  punishment. 

Then  he  should  remember  that  if  this 
be  so,  no  amount  of  assertion  or  repudia- 
tion on  his  part  can  in  the  least  alter  the 
fact.  And  if  our  Lord  ever  revealed 
anything  about  the  unseen  in  unmistak- 
able terms,  it  was  this  sombre  fact. 

There  is  one  comfort  at  any  rate.  We 
are  not  there  yet,  and  there  are  ways  of 
escaping  going  there.  And  the  ways  are 
so  well  known  and  within  such  easy 
reach,  that  we  can  be  morally  sure  of 
never  having  to  go  there,  if  we  like. 

The  only  reason  why  any  one  goes  to 
that  dreadful  place,  is  that  he  departs 
from  life  in  a  state  of  overt  rebellion 
and  contempt  for  the  great  Creator,  who 
gave  him  his  being.  Where  else  could 
he  go?     Surely  he  could  not  expect  to 


204      THE   REACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC   SCIENCE. 

be  cordially  greeted  and  richly  rewarded 
and  welcomed  hospitably,  after  such  reck- 
less and  daring  conduct  as  his.  Those 
who  have  power  in  this  world  are  not 
accustomed  to  welcome  to  their  homes, 
and  dine,  and  be  hail-fellows  with  the  men 
who  despise  their  authority  and  trample 
on  the  laws  —  such  a  thing  was  never 
heard  of.  Do  you  think  it  will  be  any 
different  in  the  realm  beyond  the  grave? 
The  love  of  God  comes  irresistibly  with 
serving  him  and  acknowledging  Him  — 
above  all,  with  a  good  conscience.  The 
truth  is,  a  good  deal  of  this  questioning 
about  Hell  arises  from  not  having  a  good 
conscience  and  knowing  very  well  why  — 
having  got  into  scrapes  by  sinning  freely, 
it  takes  a  lot  of  whistling  to  keep  up 
courage,  like  the  boy  passing  through 
the  graveyard.  When  you  pass  in  your 
walks  by  a  convict-prison,  you  know  very 
well  there  is  a  painful  state  of  things  go- 
ing on  there  —  fellow-beings  undergoing 
severe  and  often  dreadful  punishment. 
You  return  to  your  dinner  none  the  less 
with  appetite  unimpaired.  You  do  not 
rail  against  the  judge  and  are  not  the 
least  angry  with  the  jury  who  convicted. 
Why?  Because  you  very  sensibly  say  — 
Justice  demanded  it.  ''  But  it  need  not  be 
eternal,"  yousay.  To  assert  that,  you  must 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   THEIR  ANSWERS.        205 

be  in  a  position  to  understand  all  about 
God's  justice,  which  you  are  not,  that  be- 
ing infinite,  and  above  our  limited  com- 
prehension. Besides,  between  you  and 
me,  is  there  anything  less  than  the  sanc- 
tion of  eternal  punishment  that  will  re- 
strain the  run  of  men  from  vice?  You 
know  there  is  not.  Your  rearrangement 
of  things  for  God,  is,  to  say  it  without 
wishing  to  be  impolite,  an  impertinence. 
It  does  not  concern  us ;  we  are  not  mas- 
ters here.  If  there  is  one  thing  clearer 
than  another,  it  is  that  we  are  wholly  de- 
pendent—  otherwise  we  could  settle  down 
comfortably  and  arrange  to  stay  in  life  as 
long  as  we  pleased.  But  we  cannot  stay. 
Some  one  will  call  some  day.  So  it  is 
wisest  to  prepare  to  go  in  submission, 
and  you  may  be  sure  everything  will  be 
right  with  us. 

The  general  disposition  of  things  here 

below  and  our  destinies  are  not  in   our 

hands,  but  it  is  given  to  us  to  make  the 

best  of  them  and,  turning  them  to  our 

advantage,  we  need  not  go  to  Hell.   '* 

But  enough  —  the   famous   and  devout 

author    of     the    "Imitation"     propounds 

rather  dogmatically  that  "  they  who  travel 

much  are  rarely  (without  the  emphasis) 

sanctified"  —  by    the    way,    how    did   he 

know  since  he   never  went  anywhere?  — 


206      THE  BEACTION  FROM  AGNOSTIC  SCIENCE, 

but  be  that  as  it  may,  the  widely-traveled 
meet,  by  the  waysides  and  on  the  high- 
roads of  life,  many  odd  specimens  of 
humanity  and  fall  in  with  curious  phases 
of  human  psychology.  If  their  experi- 
ences take  a  little  of  the  spiritual  shine 
off  themselves,  there  is  left  them  a  com- 
pensation from  the  good,  or  instruction, 
or  pleasure  that  others  may  derive  from 
reading  those  experiences  even  in  the  very 
humble  way  here  presented. 

THE   END. 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  -  U.C.  BERKELEY 


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